Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse ««««
R, 96m. 1991
Featuring interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, John Millius, George Lucas, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall, Frederic Forrest and Laurence Fishburne. Written by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper. Directed by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola.
“The way we went was very much...the way the Americans went to Vietnam. We were in the jungle. We had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little, we went insane.”
-Francis Ford Coppola, Cannes Film Festival, 1979, talking to reporters about his experiences filming Apocalypse Now).
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, a documentary about the making of director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now, reveals the trials and tribulations Coppola and his cast went through while filming on location in the Philippines.
Apocalypse Now was based on Joseph Conrad’s book, Heart of Darkness, and told the story of Colonel Willard (Martin Sheen) who is given a special assignment to assassinate a green beret known as Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz was a highly decorated war veteran who went mysteriously insane and proclaimed himself leader of a tribe of Indians in the Vietnamese jungles.
Principal photography for the film began in early 1976 and shooting lasted 238 days. The documentary offers lots of behind the scenes conversations between the director and his wife, Eleanor, as well as, the cast. At one point, Eleanor refers to her husband’s obsession like a research paper.
“Instead of an A, you get a B,” she says.
“I’m going to get an F,” the Academy Award winning director barks out. “This film is a $20 million dollar disaster...I’m thinking of shooting myself!”
The documentary offers a brief history of other directors who attempted to make the film. Orson Welles wanted to adapt Conrad’s novel as his first motion picture in 1938. The project was, however, shelved due to high costs and production problems. Welles chose instead to direct Citizen Kane (1941) which went on to become one of the greatest films of all time.
Apocalypse Now was made through Coppola’s production company, Zoetrope, and was intended to be the studio’s first project. Shooting was originally scheduled to begin in 1969. The film’s writer, John Millius, wanted to shoot on location in Vietnam at the height of the conflict.
The project was postponed though because distributors, at the time, refused to make films about the Vietnam War. A problem director Oliver Stone later faced when he set out to make Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Coppola intended Apocalypse Now as a character study of how people went mad in Vietnam. The problem I had with the film was while I found it to be an engaging action picture in its first ninety minutes the movie fell apart in its third act the minute Brando arrived on screen. The scenes, especially the ones with Brando, were filmed too dark and you could barely see who was fighting who much less understand what the Oscar winning actor was saying. Ironically, Coppola even admits in this documentary that he had problems trying to come up with a decent ending.
Hearts of Darkness also provides some unforgettable behind the scenes footage, some of it shocking. There is Sheen, heavily intoxicated, crying and mumbling through the opening sequence. Sheen, then 36, suffered a near fatal heart attack during filming and received last rights from a priest who spoke no English.
By comparison, Dennis Hopper played a hippie photographer who was so bombed out on drugs, he could barely remember his lines. And Brando, looking somewhat overweight, would call it a day after reciting only a few lines of dialogue.
The film was shrouded with production problems. Among them, a raging typhoon slammed into the Philippines destroying sets and costing thousands of dollars in repairs. And at one point during shooting, the military helicopters, donated by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, were called away to fight a Communist insurgency in the south.
Like Coppola’s own film, Hearts of Darkness is a character study, but instead of focusing on Willard, the documentary focuses on the director himself. The setbacks Coppola encountered while making Apocalypse Now seemed to be a prelude to the dilemmas he would later face with future projects.
Zoetrope went bankrupt after the director’s film, One From the Heart, became a critical box office flop. Coppola also faced similar problems meeting production deadlines while shooting The Godfather: Part III in 1990.
Yet despite all that, he is still a gifted artist and respected filmmaker whose films, a majority of them, have won critical acclaim and numerous awards. Apocalypse Now went on to win two academy awards the year it was released and became a top contender at the Cannes Film Festival. And in 1998, the American Film Institute listed the film as one of the 100 best movies of all time.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse offers a detailed, intimate look at the extremes Coppola undertook to get his masterpiece completed. It is one of those rare documentaries where the making of the film is much more interesting than seeing the actual work itself.
©4/30/92
R, 96m. 1991
Featuring interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, John Millius, George Lucas, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall, Frederic Forrest and Laurence Fishburne. Written by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper. Directed by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola.
-Francis Ford Coppola, Cannes Film Festival, 1979, talking to reporters about his experiences filming Apocalypse Now).
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, a documentary about the making of director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now, reveals the trials and tribulations Coppola and his cast went through while filming on location in the Philippines.
Apocalypse Now was based on Joseph Conrad’s book, Heart of Darkness, and told the story of Colonel Willard (Martin Sheen) who is given a special assignment to assassinate a green beret known as Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz was a highly decorated war veteran who went mysteriously insane and proclaimed himself leader of a tribe of Indians in the Vietnamese jungles.
Principal photography for the film began in early 1976 and shooting lasted 238 days. The documentary offers lots of behind the scenes conversations between the director and his wife, Eleanor, as well as, the cast. At one point, Eleanor refers to her husband’s obsession like a research paper.
“Instead of an A, you get a B,” she says.
“I’m going to get an F,” the Academy Award winning director barks out. “This film is a $20 million dollar disaster...I’m thinking of shooting myself!”
The documentary offers a brief history of other directors who attempted to make the film. Orson Welles wanted to adapt Conrad’s novel as his first motion picture in 1938. The project was, however, shelved due to high costs and production problems. Welles chose instead to direct Citizen Kane (1941) which went on to become one of the greatest films of all time.
Apocalypse Now was made through Coppola’s production company, Zoetrope, and was intended to be the studio’s first project. Shooting was originally scheduled to begin in 1969. The film’s writer, John Millius, wanted to shoot on location in Vietnam at the height of the conflict.
The project was postponed though because distributors, at the time, refused to make films about the Vietnam War. A problem director Oliver Stone later faced when he set out to make Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Coppola intended Apocalypse Now as a character study of how people went mad in Vietnam. The problem I had with the film was while I found it to be an engaging action picture in its first ninety minutes the movie fell apart in its third act the minute Brando arrived on screen. The scenes, especially the ones with Brando, were filmed too dark and you could barely see who was fighting who much less understand what the Oscar winning actor was saying. Ironically, Coppola even admits in this documentary that he had problems trying to come up with a decent ending.
Hearts of Darkness also provides some unforgettable behind the scenes footage, some of it shocking. There is Sheen, heavily intoxicated, crying and mumbling through the opening sequence. Sheen, then 36, suffered a near fatal heart attack during filming and received last rights from a priest who spoke no English.
By comparison, Dennis Hopper played a hippie photographer who was so bombed out on drugs, he could barely remember his lines. And Brando, looking somewhat overweight, would call it a day after reciting only a few lines of dialogue.
The film was shrouded with production problems. Among them, a raging typhoon slammed into the Philippines destroying sets and costing thousands of dollars in repairs. And at one point during shooting, the military helicopters, donated by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, were called away to fight a Communist insurgency in the south.
Like Coppola’s own film, Hearts of Darkness is a character study, but instead of focusing on Willard, the documentary focuses on the director himself. The setbacks Coppola encountered while making Apocalypse Now seemed to be a prelude to the dilemmas he would later face with future projects.
Zoetrope went bankrupt after the director’s film, One From the Heart, became a critical box office flop. Coppola also faced similar problems meeting production deadlines while shooting The Godfather: Part III in 1990.
Yet despite all that, he is still a gifted artist and respected filmmaker whose films, a majority of them, have won critical acclaim and numerous awards. Apocalypse Now went on to win two academy awards the year it was released and became a top contender at the Cannes Film Festival. And in 1998, the American Film Institute listed the film as one of the 100 best movies of all time.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse offers a detailed, intimate look at the extremes Coppola undertook to get his masterpiece completed. It is one of those rare documentaries where the making of the film is much more interesting than seeing the actual work itself.
©4/30/92
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