Two decades ago I found myself using an internet cafe in Clapham, south London, when my laptop crashed. A quarter of an hour later a man logged on next to me. It was John Pilger.
He explained that he was almost certain that he was being tracked by “the powers that be. Those around us from on high.” I went on to meet the very affable Pilger there several times. I told him how much I admired The Quiet Mutiny (1970), his first film, made for Granada ITV’s weekly series World in Action, about US conscripts in the Vietnam war.
Its helicopter and Miss America pageant sequences later inspired more glorified versions in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). The Quiet Mutiny also led to Barry Levinson’s Good Morning Vietnam (1987) about the DJ Adrian Cronauer’s satirical antics on air to the frontline troops, as played by the late Robin Williams. The real-life Cronauer opens The Quiet Mutiny in full throttle, yelling: “Good Morning Vietnam!’’
