Apocalypse Then: A Seattle man revisits his time as an extra on the set of 'Apocalypse Now'

Watch all three hours and 17 minutes of "Apocalypse Now Redux," Francis Ford Coppola's new version of his classic 1979 Vietnam War drama, and Mac MacDonald disappears. Sitting in the audience for a screening of the movie (opening today), he's here, a real live human. But on screen, his image flashes by so fast it becomes invisible.

Playboy Bunnies perform a USO show for American soldiers, and things go crazy. "I think that's my head," MacDonald says, pointing at something in the far right corner.

Several soldiers dive out of a helicopter in a North Vietnamese village just before it's destroyed by a hand grenade. "I'm the one with the yellow scarf," he says.

What yellow scarf?

But slow the movie down, way down, until you're left with still photos, and MacDonald reappears. Flip the cover of the portfolio he holds in his lap, and a different story emerges: a tale of young men, famous people, rain, disease, drugs and booze, and, at the end of it all, a movie.

MacDonald and his friends — members of a 1950s-style band called Flash Cadillac — were flown halfway around the world 25 years ago to be bit players in "Apocalypse Now." Just this spring, while packing for a move into a new Seattle home, he discovered photos from his 10-day trip to the Philippines for the filming. MacDonald, a 53-year-old motivational therapist, thought they'd been lost.

"I'd been looking for them for years," he says.

I'm with the band

During his time on the set of "Apocalypse Now," MacDonald kept a camera hidden in his clothing. Twenty-eight at the time, he flew out with Flash Cadillac, which was hired by Coppola to play in the USO scene. Sam McFadin, the band's lead singer, says MacDonald went when one of their equipment guys bailed out.

The band, hired after an appearance in "American Graffiti," flew to the Philippines for the first time in May 1976. All the actors and production staff stayed in a small three-story hotel a few hours outside Manila. When people got bored, they hung out by the pool, buzzed the countryside in Philippine army helicopters or ventured into the jungle (something the military wasn't keen on, since communist rebels were in the nearby hills). Stuntmen leapt from the hotel's roof into the pool.

The stay was supposed to last a week. But typhoons destroyed the sets and trapped everyone in the hotel. For nearly two weeks, with nothing to do, they sat around and got drunk.

"We were in the middle of nowhere, with the food turning green, the water brown," said McFadin. "All day long, we drank Coke with no ice. At the end of the day, we put a little rum in it.

"It was very hard to keep a good mental outlook."

MacDonald joined the group when they returned to the Philippines in December. Because the U.S. military wouldn't cooperate with production of the movie (seeing it as anti-American), Coppola couldn't use GIs and was desperate for Americans to put in his film. So MacDonald, who had no defined role, was dragged from scene to scene, all the while snapping pictures with his Canon AEI.

Many of the photos show the lighter side of the production: friends clowning around; beautiful women in skimpy clothing; a really, really big moth. Others transport us back into the dense, humid jungle where the movie was filmed.

In the portfolio are overhead shots of rivers, villages, helicopters in formation. We see Coppola standing next to a ruins, giving instructions to his crew. Plastic tarps try to keep things dry from the unrelenting tropical rain.

The graveness of the movie, filmed barely a year after the fall of Saigon, affected the way people acted on the set.

"It was all very somber," MacDonald says. "There was none of the gaiety and hilarity of `American Graffiti.' It was a night-and-day difference."

The horror

"Apocalypse Now" is about getting lost. Willard, an Army assassin played by Martin Sheen, is sent far upriver into Cambodia to kill Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a deranged Special Forces colonel. The journey is a succession of stranger, darker encounters with Vietnamese civilians, American soldiers and finally Kurtz, living in a crumbling temple as a self-appointed god.

During production, Sheen suffered a heart attack. Brando was way overweight, with little idea how he'd play his character. Coppola, who had mortgaged his house to help finance the film, couldn't find an ending for it — and nearly went insane himself.

The group's only hint of trouble came during the filming of the USO scene. MacDonald's job was to pretend to be a photographer. The band set up on two platforms on either side of a Huey helicopter. During the scene, soldiers storm the stage where three Playboy Playmates dance, creating a melee complete with flares, the chopper's quick exit and extras diving and falling into the river.

For a solid week of nights, they filmed the scene, while the rain pounded down. People were hurt in the craziness, while McFadin kept watching the helicopter blades spinning closer to his head.

"It was chaos," he said. "It was scary because nobody knew what was going to happen. There was this group dynamic at work that, even though everything was planned, made it feel out of control.

"I just remember ducking down, thinking that I'll just hide behind my amp for a little while."

No big deal

How's this for MacDonald's introduction to a star?

"I'm at the urinal, and standing next to me is Martin Sheen."

Life in the jungle broke down normal walls between stars and bit players. Mass dysentery bonded people on the first tour to the typhoon-ravaged set. Isolated in a Third World country, with only a small town nearby, nearly everyone ate and partied together.

"My mind was just exploding," MacDonald says. "All around me are these amazing actors, my heroes, really. And I have to pretend it's all no big deal."

In MacDonald's photos, Robert Duvall, who played the surfing-mad Col. Kilgore, stands shirtless while MacDonald — in green rain hat, coat and dark sunglasses — listens. Coppola sings with the band. A very young Laurence Fishburne (then called Larry) clowns around.

Long after the movie's release, people talked about missing scenes, cut from the film when Coppola rushed to finish it for release. One, now returned in "Apocalypse Now Redux," features three Playboy Playmates, including the magazine's 1974 Playmate of the Year, Cynthia Wood.

In the sequence, Willard barters diesel oil for time with them. Twenty-five years later, MacDonald pauses at his photos of Wood in her halter-top-and-bikini cowboy outfit.

"She was such a goddess," says MacDonald, who still has Wood's Playboy photo shoot.

Something brilliant

For a few weeks, MacDonald and his friends were in the middle of one of the film world's great dramas. Then they came home, and life moved on. Flash Cadillac still plays, often accompanied by orchestras. MacDonald put on a tie, went to work for Boeing and later started his own business.

MacDonald says he's not the type to dwell on a brief moment in his life, no matter how cool it was at the time. But then he starts talking about it again, and you can see from that look in his eyes how hard it is not to dwell on it.

"On my left I see Martin Sheen, on my right I see Robert Duvall," he says, his voice building. "On my left is Francis Ford Coppola, on my right is Harrison Ford. There's Dennis Hopper, Larry Fishburne, the Playboy Bunnies, the Filipino military. And then you look up and you're in this thing. For a few days, you're in the middle of something great, something brilliant."

MacDonald smiles, looks down at a photo of himself standing in front of a helicopter and then, slowly, turns the page.