"My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money
too much equipment. And, little by little, we went insane."
Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' is one of the all-time great triumphs, a film so mind-blowingly spectacular that we are immediately aware that this is about as good as any film can get. However, behind this epic piece of cinema lies a production story that is riddled with as much drama and uncertainty as the plot of the movie it created.
Originally slated as a 16 week production, 'Apocalypse Now' took more than double that to film, and Coppola invested millions of his own dollars to ensure that the picture was completed. Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis, was asked to produce a video production diary of the film's completion, and her footage intercut with more recent interviews with the cast and crew became 'Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.'
Throughout her narration, Eleanor Coppola frequently compares the plight of Captain Benjamin L. Willard (played by Martin Sheen in 'Apocalypse Now') with that of her own husband. Just like Willard is simply unable to turn back down the river, as is Francis Ford Coppola. Having invested so much into this big-budget war movie, he feels that he must pursue it to the end. When asked if he ever considered quitting, Coppola replies with, "How am I gonna quit from myself? Am I gonna say "Francis, I quit?" I was financing the movie. How could I quit?"
The production period was certainly a tumultuous one. Just one week into filming, Coppola made the difficult (and very costly) decision to replace his main actor, discarding Harvey Keitel in favour of Martin Sheen. During the filming of the opening scene in a Saigon hotel room, Sheen got into character by drinking himself into oblivion, unintentionally smashing a mirror and threatening, at any moment, to attack the crew members or Coppola himself. When Sheen suffered a very serious heart attack, and almost lost his life, the following weeks were restricted to filming distant pick-up shots, with Willard's back to the camera while Sheen recovered.
Marlon Brando's somewhat uncooperative actions did not help production, either. Having demanded $1 million a week for three weeks (including a $1 million advance), Brando arrived on the set overweight and unprepared, having completely neglected to read John Conrad's novel 'Hearts Of Darkness,' the distant source for the script. At one point prior to this, Brando had reputedly even threatened to walk away from the film (taking the $1 million dollar advance with him), if production was delayed any further.
Even after watching this film, which documents the events of the production in a detailed and compelling manner, I can still only imagine the pressure that Francis Ford Coppola must have been under. In several instances, during conversations that Eleanor Coppola secretly recorded for future reference, Coppola contemplates suicide, absolutely convinced that his film is going to be terrible.
This is documentary film-making at its most gripping. If you don't emerge from this film with a newfound respect for Francis Ford Coppola and 'Apocalypse Now,' or even just for filmmakers in general, then I seriously doubt that you were even paying attention. For fans of the film, or of film-making itself, this is a must-see.
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