![]() Under the banner of his independent production company, American Zoetrope, and with an approved budget of $12 million, the epic war film would begin production in the Philippines in early 1976 with a cast that included Marlon Brando, Harvey Keitel, and Robert Duvall. In 1975, after establishing himself among Hollywood elites and possessing enough power and influence to make nearly any film he desired, Coppola took Apocalypse Now off the shelf and dusted it off. The film would soon find itself on the creative back burner, however, with Coppola focusing on his Godfather films and The Conversation, and Lucas going on to write and direct American Graffitiand Star Wars. The film was planned to be shot on 16mm and approached with a documentary-like aesthetic in the vein of The Battle of Algiers. He enlisted the help of fellow film school graduates and friends, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, who would take the reins as director and producer, respectively. Thanks in part to a USC professor who informed the young filmmaker and his fellow students that no one had ever been able to "lick Heart of Darkness," which Milius considered akin to "waving a red flag" in front of the proverbial bull, the screenwriter was enticed by the notion of taking a shot at an adaptation. Three decades later, as Hollywood saw the transition from the Golden Age of Cinema to a new generation of filmmaking rebels fresh out of college, Heart of Darkness resurfaced with the screenwriting efforts of John Milius. Perhaps most telling is the way in which Francis Ford Coppola described the production of his film when, more than three years later at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, he said of Apocalypse Now, "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." From typhoons to heart attacks and logistical overruns to unruly actors, bringing Apocalypse Now to the screen would pose a series of risks and challenges to its creators that, in a pronounced example of life imitating art, would reflect the surreal journey into the unknown undertaken by Conrad's protagonist in the film's source material. Accompanying Coppola and shooting her own footage for what would eventually become the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, was his wife, Eleanor, and what she captured would help paint a portrait of the struggle endured by her husband and his filmmaking team. Because sometimes, your trip ends before the in-flight movie does, and you really don’t want to ask the pilot to circle the airport just so you can catch the finale.When the cast and crew arrived in the Philippines in early 1976 to begin work on the film, little did they know that they would be embarking on a production that would go down as one of the most fraught and turbulent in cinematic history.Because sometimes, you fall asleep watching a mediocre rental, and would rather return it on time than pay two more bucks just to see the end.Because sometimes, your TiVo timer didn’t get it quite right, and cut off the crucial final minutes of something that won’t get shown again for six months.Because sometimes, you’re not interested in seeing that movie everyone’s talking about but are dying to know what the hubbub is about anyway.Because sometimes, you vaguely remember an old movie that had some sort of plot twist at the end of it, but can’t remember what it was. ![]() Because sometimes, the surprise “spoiler” ending is the only reason you’d pay $11 to see what is otherwise a turkey of a film.Jedburgh kills Pine, Moore, and Moore’s assistant, and then lets the responding officer shoot him dead. ![]() ![]() He explains that he has had a change of heart since Tommy had lost his only family, and Jedburgh never had any family to speak of. He finally kills Bennett and is taken to the hospital.Įlsewhere, Jedburgh is talking with Moore and Pine. Though struggling, Tommy manages to escape the plant and make it to Bennett’s house, where he kills the two security agents, one of whom was the on who killed Emma at the beginning of the movie. They plan to do this by kidnapping him and poisoning him with the same radiation that they contaminated Emma’s milk with. Emma was planning on blowing the whistle on her bosses at the nuclear plant for building nuclear missiles with foreign parts so that, if used, the weapons would be traced back to an enemy country rather than its true origin.īennett, the manager of the plant, conspires with Moore, Senator Pine, and Jedburgh to have Tommy killed for investigating his daughter’s death. ![]()
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