Career
The book was called the best "to have been written about the Vietnam War" by The New York Times Book Review. Novelist John le Carré called it "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time." Herr later was credited with pioneering the literary genre of the nonfiction novel, along with authors such as Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Tom Wolfe. From 1971 to 1975 he published nothing.
Then, in 1977, he went on the road with rock & roller Ted Nugent and wrote about the experience in a 1978 cover story for Crawdaddy magazine.
Also in 1977, he published Dispatches, upon which his reputation mostly rests. Herr contributed to the narration for Francis Ford Coppola"s Apocalypse Now (1979).
He co-wrote the screenplay for the film Full Metal Jacket (1987) with director Stanley Kubrick and author Gustav Hasford. Herr collaborated with Richard Stanley in writing the original screenplay for the 1996 adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau.
However, Stanley claims the subsequent rewrites cost Herr his writing cr, omitting most of the material created by the two writers.
The omission probably worked to his favor, however, since the movie was panned by critics and earned credited writers Stanley and Ron Hutchinson a Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay of 1997. Herr wrote a pair of articles for Vanity Fair about Stanley Kubrick, which were later incorporated into the small book – Kubrick (2000) – a very personal biography of the director He declined to edit the script of Kubrick"s last film Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
