This presented problems earlier in the film, notably in the scene where Captain Willard is getting his orders of what to do, because G.D. Spradlin and Harrison Ford were saying, 'Colonel Leighley this, Colonel Leighley that, Colonel, Colonel, Colonel'. And now, we had to change it to Colonel Kurtz. Now, Leighley is two different syllables than Kurtz.
So, while I was editing this scene, I'm thinking, well we're going to have to change this to Kurtz. One easy way to do it, of course, is to make sure that nobody ever says that name on camera. Which could be done, but in a way that would be like a magician holding the handkerchief in a certain way that told you there was an object behind there. So, you don't want to do that. So I selected three or four places and looked at them carefully thinking can we shoehorn Kurtz into those lips that say Leighley? And I think I chose the ones which were malleable in that way and at this point, we arranged for the actors to come in and change their dialogue. This is the, what's called ADR, automatic dialogue replacement. And G.D. Spradlin came in, he plays the Colonel, the General, and he did it, and you see it in the film, and it works to the extent that people don't run out of the cinema screaming, I just saw something that didn't sync up.
The problem happened with Harrison Ford, who - I wasn't there - but Francis called me up from Los Angeles and said Harrison has refused to do this line. Why? Well, because that's not what he said, and he thinks it's absurd to change Leighley to Kurtz. He can't do it. And, I said, 'I'll take care of it', not knowing how I was going to take care of it. But, we arranged that Harrison come to San Francisco and I think he had to come for other reasons as well, and I took him down to the basement of Francis Coppola's house in San Francisco which was a screening room. And it was a nice comfortable area, well upholstered, and I had two recorders with me and people with me to run the recorders, and I said, 'Here's what we're going to do Harrison. Listen to the tape, the sound on this one tape'. And he said, 'Where's the picture?' and I said, 'Forget the picture, don't worry about the picture', because, reading between the lines, that was what was freaking Harrison out, that he had to look at himself saying 'Leighley', and he had to say 'Kurtz', and he just, I don't know, couldn't do it. So, no picture, so just listen to what's on this tape, and what it was, was I had prepared a loop of that line, and 'Go to Colonel Leighley's command. Go to Colonel Leighley's command. Go to Colonel Leighley's command'. Over and over.
And, here and I gave him a little button. 'When you're... just say that over and over, and close your eyes, and when you're comfortable, just press the button, this tape with turn on, and just say, and: Go to Colonel Kurtz' command'. So he did that, it was, I think he did it in one take, if not one, maybe two, it just... he just said it, and he said it in exactly the same tonality that he had said before. If you're not looking at the picture when you do this, it's much easier to kind of get into what your performance was, especially if it's repeated quickly over and over again. 'Go to Colonel Leighley's command, go to Colonel Leighley's command, go to Colonel Leighley's command, go to Colonel Kurtz's command'. And I said, thank you very much, shook his hand, and that's what's in the film. So there are frequently strategies that you have to employ sometimes at the last minute to make these things function in the best way that they possibly can, knowing that ultimately it's not true, and you're... when you look at the film, the lips say 'Leighley', but you hear 'Kurtz', but because everything else matches as well as it does, you get away with it.