Apocalypse Now

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Apocalypse Now
Directed by	Francis Ford Coppola
Produced by	American Zoetrope
Written by	Novella: Joseph Conrad Screenplay: John Milius Francis Ford Coppola
Starring	Martin Sheen Marlon Brando Robert Duvall Frederic Forrest Laurence Fishburne Dennis Hopper Harrison Ford
Music by	Carmine Coppola & Francis Ford Coppola
Cinematography	Vittorio Storaro
Editing by	Lisa Fruchtman Gerald B. Greenberg Walter Murch
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	10 May 1979 (premiere at Cannes) 15 August 1979 1 December 1979
Running time	153 min. 202 min. (Redux)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$31,500,000
IMDb profile

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American film about a soldier's journey during the Vietnam War. It was directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script by Coppola, John Milius and Michael Herr. The script was inspired by Joseph Conrad's classic novella Heart of Darkness.

Set during the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now tells the story of Captain Willard, a taciturn American sent to infiltrate the compound of rogue United States Army Special Forces Colonel Walter Kurtz, and terminate his command "with extreme prejudice" — in other words, kill him. Willard's journey upriver and its culmination are studded with increasingly surreal and bizarre episodes, some of which, while seemingly unbelievable, are based in part on true stories told to the filmmakers by Vietnam veterans.^{[citation needed]} As the film continues and becomes increasingly hallucinatory, Willard begins to lose sight of his purpose in the jungle. The film can be read as a metaphor for the United States in Vietnam, but can also be read more generally as a journey into the darkness of the human psyche.

The film features performances by Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin L. Willard (based on Marlow in Conrad's novel), Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz, Dennis Hopper as a fast-talking hallucinogen-imbibing, burned-out photojournalist, and Robert Duvall in an Oscar-nominated turn as the gung-ho borderline-psychotic Lt. Colonel Kilgore. Several other actors who were, or later became, prominent stars have minor roles in the movie including Harrison Ford, G.D. Spradlin, Scott Glenn and Laurence Fishburne. Fishburne was only fourteen years old when shooting began in March 1976, and was credited as "Larry Fishburne." Apocalypse Now took so long to finish that Fishburne was seventeen (the same age as his character) by the time of its release.

The movie became notorious in the entertainment press long before its release due to its lengthy and troubled production. Director Coppola financed the film completely with his own money, earned from the blockbuster The Godfather films, and faced the possibility of bankruptcy if the film was not a success. The making of the film was chronicled by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, in the book Notes and in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, which uses her documentary footage shot during principal photography. The tempestuous story of the film's production has now passed into Hollywood legend.

The movie poster art for Apocalypse Now is one of the more famous paintings by Bob Peak, who is considered an influential artist in the world of movie posters.

Contents 1 Synopsis 1.1 1979 theatrical release 1.2 Alternate endings 1.3 Redux 2 Adaptation 3 Themes 3.1 War and humanity 3.2 The nature of insanity 3.3 The killing of Kurtz 4 Background and production 5 Controversy 6 Responses 7 In popular culture 8 Principal cast 9 Awards 9.1 Wins 9.2 Nominations 10 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Apocalypse Now has been released with several different endings, and, more recently in an extended version.

[edit] 1979 theatrical release

The film opens with no title or credits. The first thing heard is the muffled sound of a helicopter (this becomes clearer and persists during the entire opening sequence). A forest then appears, which is hit by an air strike causing it to catch fire amid explosions. This sequence is set to "The End" by The Doors. This dissolves into images of a man in a room and back to the jungle explosions. The ceiling fan in the room is occasionally shown while the helicopter sounds are prominent. Finally, the dissolve goes back to the man, and the character is introduced via first-person narration.

U.S. Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard is stationed in Saigon. A seasoned veteran, he is deeply troubled and apparently no longer fit for civilian life. A group of intelligence officers approach him with a special mission: go up-river into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a former member of the United States Army Special Forces.

Williard is told Kurtz, a decorated officer and future general, has gone insane and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep inside the forest in neutral Cambodia. Their claims are supported by very disturbing radio broadcasts and/or recordings made by Kurtz himself. Willard is ordered to undertake a mission to find Kurtz and "terminate his command... with extreme prejudice."

Willard studies the intelligence files during the boat ride to the river entrance and learns that Kurtz, isolated in his compound, has assumed the role of a warlord and is worshipped by the natives and his own loyal men. Another officer, Colby, sent earlier to kill Kurtz, may have become one of his lieutenants.

Willard begins his trip up the fictional Nung River, based on the Mekong River, on a PBR (Patrol Boat, River), curiously named Erebus, with an eclectic crew composed of by-the-book and formal Chief Phillips, a black Navy boat commander; GM3 Lance B. Johnson, a tanned all-American California surfer; the Cajun Engineman, Jay "Chef" Hicks, and GM3 Tyrone, also known as "Mr. Clean", a black 17-year-old from "some South Bronx shit-hole".

The PBR arrives at a Landing Zone where Willard and the crew meet up with Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore, the eccentric commander of the regional AirCav unit, following a massive and hectic mopping-up operation of a conquered enemy town. Kilgore, a keen surfer, befriends Johnson. Later, he learns from one of his men, Mike, that the beach down the coast which marks the opening to the river is perfect for surfing, a factor which persuades him to capture it. The problem is, his troops say, it is "Charlie's point" and heavily fortified. Dismissing this complaint with the explanation that "Charlie don't surf!", Kilgore orders his men to saddle up in the morning so that the AirCav can capture the town and the beach. Riding high above the coast in a fleet of Hueys accompanied by H-6s, Kilgore launches an attack on the beach. The scene, famous for its use of Richard Wagner's epic "Ride of the Valkyries", ends with the soldiers surfing the barely claimed beach amidst skirmishes between infantry and VC. After helicopters swoop over the village and demolish all visible signs of resistance, a giant napalm strike in the nearby jungle dramatically marks the climax of the battle. Kilgore exults to Willard in a famous speech:

You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son! Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know one time we had a hill bomb? For twelve hours, and when it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know, that gasoline smell! The whole hill — it smelled like... Victory. Someday this war's gonna end.

The lighting and mood darken as the boat navigates upstream and Willard's silent obsession with Kurtz deepens. Incidents on the journey include a run-in with a tiger while Willard and Chef search for mangoes, an impromptu inspection of a Vietnamese sampan that leads to a massacre, a surreal stop at the last American outpost during a Vietnamese attack against a wood bridge under construction there, and the shocking deaths of both Clean and Chief Phillips during a gunfire ambush with hidden Viet Cong soldiers and a spear thrown by a native on the shore, respectively.

After arriving at Kurtz's outpost, Willard leaves Chef behind with orders to call in an air strike on the village if he does not return. They are met by a borderline-psychotic freelance photographer (Hopper) who explains Kurtz's greatness and philosophical skills to provoke his people into following him. Brought before Kurtz and held in captivity in a darkened temple, Willard’s constitution appears to weaken as Kurtz lectures him on his theories of war, humanity, and civilization. Kurtz slowly explains his motives and philosophy.

While bound outside in the pouring rain, Willard is approached by Kurtz, who places the severed head of Chef in his lap, which finally breaks him. Coppola makes little explicit, but we come to believe that Willard and Kurtz develop an understanding nonetheless; Kurtz wishes to die at Willard's hands. Juxtaposed with a ceremonial slaughtering of a water buffalo, Willard enters Kurtz's chamber during one of his message recordings, and kills him with a machete. Lying bloody and dying on the ground, Kurtz whispers "The horror... the horror." (This line is taken directly from Conrad's novella.) Willard, having subsequently granted Kurtz his wish, is offered the chance to succeed him in his warlord-demigod role. Willard walks through the now-silent crowd of natives until he comes upon Lance, who seems to have integrated himself into the society. The two of them make their way to the PBR and float away as Kurtz's final words echo in the wind as the screen fades to black.

The credits then roll as Kurtz's base is destroyed by huge explosions.

[edit] Alternate endings

The original 1979 theatrical release ended with shots of Kurtz's base exploding. However, when Coppola heard that audiences interpreted this as an air strike called by Willard, Coppola pulled the film from its 35mm run, and put credits on a black screen. In the DVD commentary, Coppola explains that the images of explosions had not been intended to be part of the story; they were intended to be seen as completely separate from the film. He had added them to the credits because he had captured the footage during the demolition of the set in the Philippines, which was filmed with multiple cameras fitted with different film stocks and lenses to capture the explosions at different speeds. He had not known what to do with the footage and so had placed it at the end of the film.

Because of the confusion over the misinterpreted ending, there are multiple slightly varying versions of the ending credits. Some TV screenings maintain the explosion footage at the end, others do not, and there are several other versions.

The 70mm release ends with no credits, save for 'Copyright 1979 Omni Zoetrope' right after the film ends; Willard's boat pulls away from Kurtz's compound superimposed over the face of a stone idol which then fades into black. This mirrors the lack of any opening titles, and supposedly stems from Coppola's original intention to "tour" the film as one would a play: the credits would have appeared on printed programs provided before the screening began. This was, in fact, done in certain cinemas and was repeated during the theatrical release of Apocalypse Now: Redux.^{[citation needed]}

The first DVD of the theatrical version plays like the 70mm version, without beginning or ending credits, but has them on a separate part of the DVD.

The credits to Apocalypse Now: Redux are different again: the credits play over a black background, but with ambient music and jungle sounds over a black background.

[edit] Redux

In 2001, Coppola released Apocalypse Now: Redux (Latin for "brought back") in cinemas and subsequently on DVD. This is an extended version that restores 49 minutes of scenes cut from the original film. The major additions are:

• Some extra combat footage before Willard meets Kilgore.
• A humorous scene in which Willard's team steals Kilgore's surfboard as they begin their journey up the river.
• A follow-up scene to the dance of the Playboy playmates, in which Willard's team finds the playmates awaiting evacuation after their helicopter has run out of fuel. Willard deals two hours of good time with the bunnies for his men, in exchange for two barrels of fuel. One of the playmates tells her life story, revealing her feelings of shame and sexploitation.
• After the death of Mr. Clean, the team encounters the de Marais family's rubber plantation, a holdover from the colonization of French Indochina. They solemnly bury Mr. Clean and later have an elegant but animated dinner at which the de Marais men and Willard discuss the French experience of the war and how the U.S. got involved. Afterward, Willard smokes opium with the de Marais widow and sleeps with her.
• At Kurtz's base, Kurtz reads from a Time magazine article about the war, surrounded by Vietnamese children. This is the only scene in which Kurtz appears in daylight.

The most significant footage added in the Redux version is the anticolonialism chapter involving the de Marais family's rubber plantation. This touchy political critique of the French colonization of Vietnam was removed from the 1979 cut, which premiered at Cannes at a time when the French Communist Party was strong and the Indochina War was taboo. In the film, the French family patriarchs argue about the positive side of colonialism in Indochina — which is ironicized through the quarrels — and at the same time denounce the betrayal of the military men in the First Indochina War (the Vietnam War is sometimes known as the Second Indochina War) by the Communist activists in France.

Hubert de Marais also explains how entire French battalions were sacrificed at Dîen Bîen Phu by the politicians. A major revelation to Willard is that, ironically, the US had originally founded the Viet Minh (Vietcong) in an anti-colonialist move to get the French out. However, Coppola seems to imply irony^{[citation needed]} when he has the French proclaim that the "French always pay respect to the dead of our allies," since this hints on a famous exchange between the President of France, Charles De Gaulle, who requested that all American troops withdraw from French soil, and President Johnson, who sarcastically asked, "Even the dead from Normandy?" Coppola shows the French as US allies but significantly elides the Cold War background and the historical fact that the United States were deeply involved in the war led by the French, financing 80% of the France's war effort (around $400,000,000) and positioning the French as "the only rampart of the Free World against the evil of communism".^{[citation needed]} The American government has supported the French the same way it did earlier with the South Koreans, as a way of stopping the communist expansion in South-East Asia since uniforms, helmets, rifles, and tanks used by the French in Indochina were all "made in America".^{[citation needed]}

The Redux version polarized audiences to a greater degree than the original with several of the film's admirers criticizing it as overlong and adding little to the original.^{[citation needed]} Coppola himself has continued to circulate of the original version as well: the two versions are packaged together in the Complete Dossier DVD, released on August 15, 2006.

[edit] Adaptation

Although inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film deviates extensively from its source material. The novel, based on Conrad's real experiences as a steam paddle boat captain in Africa, is set in the Belgian Congo during the 19th century. Kurtz and Marlow (who is named Willard in the movie) both work for a Belgian trading company that brutally exploits its native African workers. When Marlow arrives at Kurtz's outpost, he discovers the once humane and brilliant man has gone insane and reverted to his savage nature, lording in bloody fashion over a small tribe of natives (the fence of his outpost is adorned with human heads), whom he allows to worship him as a god (his weapons are referred to as the "thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter"). The novel ends with Kurtz dying on the trip back and the narrator musing that the River Thames, on which the story is being recounted, seems to run endlessly on into "the heart of an immense darkness", as he reflects on Kurtz's pronouncement "The horror! The horror!" and envies Kurtz as to the conviction of his pronouncement, if not his actual experience.

One of the most basic changes the film makes regards the motivations of its main character. In the novel, Marlow is the pilot of a river boat sent to collect ivory from Kurtz's outpost, only gradually becoming infatuated with him as a result of his outstanding reputation. In fact, when he discovers Kurtz in terrible health, Marlow makes a concerted effort to bring him home safely. In the movie, Willard is an assassin dispatched to kill Kurtz. Moreover, some sequences in the film, such as the Do-Lung Bridge, the helicopter assault, and Colonel Kilgore's character, have no resemblance to anything in the novel and are original inventions by the screenwriters. Marlon Brando's physical appearance is also very different from Kurtz as described in the novel; Conrad's Kurtz is extremely thin and emaciated after a long illness. Other aspects of the film, however, such as Dennis Hopper's character, the concept of Kurtz as a god-like leader of a tribe of natives and his malarial fever, Kurtz's written exclamation "Exterminate them all!" and his final lines "The horror! The horror!" are lifted almost verbatim from Conrad's novel.

Coppola has maintained that many episodes in the film—the spear and arrow attack on the boat, for example—respect the spirit of the novel and in particular its critique of the concepts of civilization and progress. While Coppola substituted European colonization with American interventionism this does not change the universal message of the book. [1]

[edit] Themes

Apocalypse Now is a thematically rich film. The primary motif is the same as in Heart of Darkness, that is, an Odyssey in the epic tradition of Homer and the Orpheus myth into the dark side of the human soul; the Perfume River is a counterpart to the mythological Hell river Styx's: as Willard says, "I was going to the worst place in the World, [...] a river that snakes through the war". The journey upriver to an unknown goal is an often used literary device and a variation on the quest myth.^{[citation needed]} The secondary motif of the duality of man is illustrated by the conflict between Kurtz and Willard, and is made explicit in the Redux cut through the added line "You are both: one that kills and one that loves." The last, arguably the most important, theme in the movie is identified by Slavoj Žižek in his book, Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Kurtz is a man who has over-identified with the horrific military system to such an extent that he is able to truly understand and oppose its horrors. This is why he has so many followers.

[edit] War and humanity

In the opening scenes, Willard relates that he is on his second tour of duty and that he has returned to Vietnam because he is unable to re-integrate himself into civilian life.

Saigon... shit. I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now . . . waiting for a mission . . . getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

Besides suggesting that war is an extension of man's fundamentally deranged and savage nature, Willard's chilling monologue is also an allusion to post traumatic stress disorder,^{[citation needed]} a condition common among war veterans. Willard's constant narration gives us a glimpse into his fractured psychological state. This is particularly true in the opening scenes, in which he lies in his bed and stares blankly into the ceiling before erupting into a drunken rage. In the course of this rampage he punches his own reflection in a mirror, reinforcing the theme of the doppelgänger, or shadow self.^{[citation needed]}

In the same way, Willard's quest for Kurtz's compound parallels Kurtz's own descent into madness. Willard never tells his fellow shipmates on the PBR the true purpose of his mission and, in a chilling scene in which his crew massacres civilians sailing on a sampan, Willard murders the only survivor, a young girl, in cold blood. In the same fashion, Kurtz, a committed family man and a highly respected colonel, is driven insane after witnessing a vile atrocity committed by his enemies while on a peacekeeping mission. He realizes that he can never win the war unless he surrenders his morality and kills without judgment — in other words, by becoming as horiffic and savage as his enemy.

Willard's story has thus been interpreted as a left-wing critique of the bureaucracy that directs soldiers in the war:^{[citation needed]} the bureaucrats propagandized the Vietnam War as a just cause to save the world from the evil of Communism. The anti-war movement and several Vietnam war veterans fiercely condemned the war and believed that the government lied and misled the public. Even Willard, who is assigned the mission, is cynical about it from the beginning, explaining in his narration that "charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500." On the other hand, it has also been interpreted as a rightwing attack on the American government's conduct of the war as hypocritical and unwilling to undertake the necessary measures to win the war.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] The nature of insanity

Another theme of the film is insanity, and of war as a fundamentally insane phenomenon. Kurtz's insanity is presumed at the beginning of the film, but by the time the film ends we have witnessed so much bizarre and obviously psychotic behavior that Kurtz seems to be less insane, rather in his natural element. Kurtz himself can be seen as the personification of the fundamentally deranged or fundamentally savage nature of man. Deranged and savage insanity is also a major theme of the novel Heart of Darkness, whose title refers to the idea of man as a fundamentally savage creature hidden under a thin and very fragile veneer of civilization. The film emphasizes the ease with which war destroys this veneer and releases man's basic destructive urges.^{[citation needed]}

Willard seems to admire Kurtz to a certain extent because Kurtz is willing to acknowledge this basic savagery without resorting to hypocrisy. On the other hand, Willard eventually revolts against this acceptance of insanity and destroys Kurtz. However, he takes Kurtz's testament back with him on his return to the "civilized" world. The film ends in a profoundly ambivalent fashion, leaving us with nothing to indicate Willard's eventual success or failure in readjusting back to normative human society. The end of the movie seems to leave the audience with the question of whether war or the absence of war is the "real" normative state of mankind.

[edit] The killing of Kurtz

When Willard arrives, he is captured and put into containment where he is "interrogated" by Kurtz, who lectures him at length about his philosophies, in a famous monologue:

I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It is impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and... hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that... these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it is judgment that defeats us.

While other interpretations exist, it can be assumed that Kurtz wishes to die a soldier's death and has been waiting for his chance to achieve a noble death in battle.^{[citation needed]} However, his followers refuse to kill him and Colby (Scott Glenn), who was sent to kill him before Willard, ended up joining his "tribe". He hopes that Willard will be able to do so. Willard, at first, does not want to as he too is converted by Kurtz's beliefs, but after Kurtz's monologue and his statement on judgment Willard understands Kurtz's desire and so decides to complete his mission by subverting his moral judgment.

Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway.

The 'jungle' is seen as a metaphor for the savage nature, or more specifically the animal side, of man's human nature. Copies of From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston, and The Golden Bough by James Frazer are shown in Kurtz’s room. Both works inspired T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Kurtz quotes from Eliot's shorter poem "The Hollow Men". Frazer proposed that primitive religions shared fundamental features with modern religions. These were centred on the worship and periodic sacrifice of a sacred king as the incarnation of a dying and reviving god to renew fertility. It is implied that Kurtz fulfils this role, and that Willard is to kill and succeed him. Although willing to do the former, Willard declines the latter. He is revered by the denizens of Kurtz's tribe, but instead of taking Kurtz's place he departs, suggesting that perhaps he is capable of escaping the horror of war.^{[citation needed]}

The film's climax is one of the most frequently debated aspects of the film. Critics have called the ending an anticlimax, saying its lack of a final battle scenario makes the ending slowly paced, incoherent, and improvisational, offering no resolution to the chaotic and disjointed story.^{[citation needed]} Others have lauded the ending for precisely this reason, saying the understated climax (the killing of Kurtz and the sacrifice of the cow) and the failure to bring about a final and coherent resolution is, in fact, the only possible ending--chaos, madness, and war have no resolution, no understandable cohesiveness, and no end.^{[citation needed]} Indeed, film critic Roger Ebert, in his original review, defended the ending:

Coppola doesn't have an ending, if we or he expected the closing scenes to pull everything together and make sense of it. Nobody should have been surprised. "Apocalypse Now" doesn't tell any kind of a conventional story, doesn't have a thought-out message for us about Vietnam, has no answers, and thus needs no ending. The way the film ends now, with Brando's fuzzy, brooding monologues and the final violence, feels much more satisfactory than any conventional ending possibly could.

[edit] Background and production

The film was originally written in the late 1960s by John Milius, who would later direct films such as The Wind and the Lion and Red Dawn. Milius claims to have been inspired by his film professor's claim that no one had successfully adapted the book Heart of Darkness, despite attempts by such legendary directors as Orson Welles and Richard Brooks. Ironically, given that the finished film is seen as an anti-war movie, Milius, who is politically a rightist, originally conceived the title as a cynical answer to the leftist hippie slogan "Nirvana Now!" and his original screenplay includes several speeches by Kurtz extolling the virtues of combat and the warrior way of life.

The script was originally to be directed by George Lucas, who was then Coppola's protege at American Zoetrope. Coppola founded Zoetrope to create an alternative to the major Hollywood studios which would support the work of the rising generation of film-school graduates who would become known colloquially as "the movie brats." The war in Vietnam was still active at the time and the initial plan was to shoot Apocalypse Now guerilla-style in Vietnam itself. Warner Bros., which had a production deal with Zoetrope, refused to finance the project both for commercial reasons and the fear that the filmmakers would be killed trying to shoot it in a war zone. Lucas has claimed that the studio saw the project, as well as him and his colleagues, as "crazy." After Lucas found success with American Graffiti, Coppola chose to direct the film himself. This reportedly caused some friction between the two men. Coppola chose to finance the film entirely with his own assets, using money earned from the two Godfather films and a bank loan, in order to retain total creative control over the final product.

Coppola also rewrote the script to accommodate his vision, removing much of Milius's macho dialogue and changing the film's ending. Milius's original ending showed Kurtz and Willard joining forces to fight an American air assault on Kurtz's compound. The compound is destroyed in a massive air strike and Kurtz dies of his wounds as Willard looks on. Coppola dismissed this ending as cartoonish. The ending would be rewritten multiple times over the course of production and most of Kurtz's role would eventually be improvised by Marlon Brando. The film's narration was written during the editing process by Michael Herr, who had written the book Dispatches while a war correspondent in Vietnam.

Apocalypse Now was the first time Coppola worked with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who had shot several films for Bernardo Bertolucci, including The Conformist, one of Coppola's favorites.

The film was shot in the Philippines (most notably the Pagsanjan River and Hidden Valley Springs) and the shoot has become legendary for its length and difficulty. The film went far over budget and over schedule for several reasons. A typhoon destroyed many of the sets, which had to be rebuilt at great expense. The Philippine Air Force helicopters used for shooting Col. Kilgore's attack on a Vietnamese village were constantly being called back by President Ferdinand Marcos to serve in actual combat against anti-government rebels.

The lead role, originally to be played by Harvey Keitel, was recast after shooting began. Keitel's footage was re-shot with Martin Sheen, who suffered a near-fatal heart attack during production was suffering from alcoholism. In 50 Films to See Before You Die, aired on the United Kingdom's Channel 4 on the 22 July 2006, Sheen reveals that the opening scene was completely improvised, that he had been drinking all day before it was shot, and that he broke the mirror by accident. When he started bleeding, Coppola wanted to stop filming, but Sheen insisted that he continue. Watching the scene back, Sheen, said it was good to see where he'd come from knowing that he was never going to go back there again. It took Sheen weeks to recover and return to the set, during which time the film was in danger of being shut down. Being similar in appearance and voice, Joe Estevez, Sheen's brother, stood in for Sheen in some of the long shots and would later record some of the film's narration.

Marlon Brando appeared on set massively overweight, despite his character's description as sick and emaciated. He refused to learn his lines and had not read the book Heart of Darkness as Coppola requested. The majority of Brando's dialogue had to be improvised, despite the short time during which the actor was available.

Coppola famously said of the shoot: "We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane." The director faced bankruptcy and financial ruin if the film was not finished or shut down; his personal investment and the bizarre circumstances of the production created immense personal pressure. According to Eleanor Coppola's 1991 documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse Coppola's marriage almost fell apart and the director suffered a nervous breakdown.

The film took over a year to edit, mostly on state of the art editing equipment purchased specifically for the production by Coppola. The initial rough cut was just over five hours long and had to be severely cut. A three-hour version was screened as a "work in progress" at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme D'Or for best film. It was at the Cannes press conference that Coppola made his famous comment that "My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam." The director, according to archival materials in the recent "Complete Dossier" edition, also stated that his plan was to create a single theater, in the geographical center of the United States (likely Kansas) that would show Apocalypse Now, and only Apocalypse Now. It would be specially tailored to the film, with 3D 70mm projectors, 5.1 surround sound, and the Sensurround system, which would vibrate the seats at the appropriate intervals. In his eyes, it would be "an event", and he likened it to travelling to Mount Rushmore. It was, incidentally, exactly the same idea which motivated Richard Wagner's Bayreuth Festival. Wagner's Parsifal was initially only to be shown in Bayreuth and Bayreuth too was chosen as the festival location because it is more or less in the heart of Germany. Considering that Wagner's music features so prominently in Apocalypse Now, Coppola may have been inspired by Wagner's example.

The original released version of the movie was just over two and a half hours long, and was a box-office success in the United States and overseas. It eventually made over 100 million dollars at the box office.

Coppola re-released the film in 2001 under the title Apocalypse Now Redux. The new print was supervised by Vittorio Storaro, who used a color process of his own invention to restore the film for release. Storaro has claimed that Apocalypse Now Redux looks better than the original release print of the film.

The catastrophic production of the film unfortunately made it symbolic of the dangers of excessive directorial control over major productions. The shooting was said to have taken a toll on all involved, especially Coppola, both mentally and emotionally. To many cinephiles, Apocalypse Now is the last great film by a legendary director whose subsequent work has failed to live up to his initial promise.

[edit] Controversy

A water buffalo was partially decapitated and slaughtered with a machete for the climactic scene. It was in fact a real ritual performed by local natives, as Coppola felt that to film the ritual sacrifice would add depth and realism. Although this was an American production (ostensibly subject to American animal cruelty laws), scenes like this filmed in the Philippines were not policed or monitored. Still, after conducting an investigation, the American Humane Association gave the film an "unacceptable" rating.[2]

[edit] Responses

Apocalypse Now premiered in 1979 to mixed reviews and received polarized responses from audiences. It is said that it was as lauded as it was reviled. Many critics slammed the film, calling it overly pretentious, while others felt that it ended anticlimactically after a splendid first act.^{[citation needed]}Roger Ebert, who hailed it as the best film of 1979 and added it to his list of Great Movies, stated:

Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover.

Today, the film is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. It is on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list at number 28. Kilgore's quote "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" was number 12 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list. In 2002, Sight and Sound magazine polled several critics to name the best film of the last 25 years and Apocalypse Now was named number 1. The film is also ranked number 37 on IMDb's Top 250 movies list, with an overall rating of 8.5 out of 10.

[edit] In popular culture

Main article: List of cultural references to Apocalypse Now

Due to its cultural significance, Apocalypse Now has been heavily referenced and spoofed in various forms of popular media.

[edit] Principal cast

• Marlon Brando - Col. Walter E. Kurtz
• Martin Sheen - Capt. Benjamin L. Willard
• Dennis Hopper - "American photojournalist"
• Robert Duvall - Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore
• Frederic Forrest - Engineman 2nd Class Jay Hicks, AKA "Chef", sailor
• Albert Hall - Quartermaster Chief Phillips, AKA "Chief", Navy boat commander
• Sam Bottoms - Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Lance B. Johnson, sailor and famous surfer
• Laurence Fishburne - Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Tyrone Miller, AKA "Clean", sailor
• G. D. Spradlin - Gen. Corman, G-2
• Harrison Ford - Col. Lucas, aide to Corman
• Scott Glenn - Lt. Richard M. Colby, previously assigned Willard's current mission
• Tom Mason - Supply Sergeant
• Colleen Camp - Playmate, "Miss May"

[edit] Awards

[edit] Wins

• Cannes Film Festival : Palme d'Or
• Golden Globe Award for Best Director (Francis Ford Coppola)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor (Robert Duvall)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score - Motion Picture (Carmine Coppola & Francis Ford Coppola)

In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

It is widely believed that Apocalypse Now did not win the Best Picture Oscar in 1979 due to the fact that another Vietnam epic, The Deer Hunter, had just won the previous year.^{[citation needed]} It is often regarded as a far superior film to the 1979 winner of the award, Kramer vs. Kramer ^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Nominations

• Academy Award for Best Picture
• Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor - (Robert Duvall)
• Academy Award for Best Art Direction - Set Decoration (Angelo P. Graham, George R. Nelson and Dean Tavoularis)
• Academy Award for Directing (Francis Ford Coppola)
• Academy Award for Film Editing (Lisa Fruchtman, Gerald B. Greenberg, Richard Marks and Walter Murch)
• Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Francis Ford Coppola & John Milius)
• WGA Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen (John Milius & Francis Ford Coppola)
• Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture (Carmine Coppola & Francis Ford Coppola)

[edit] External links

• Apocalypse Now at the Internet Movie Database
• Apocalypse Now at Filmsite.org
• Metacritic Reviews
• DVD Reviewer

Francis Ford Coppola
The Godfather series	The Godfather (1972) | The Godfather Part II (1974) | The Godfather Part III (1990)
1960s	Battle Beyond the Sun (with Aleksandr Kozyr and M. Karzhukov) | The Bellboy and the Playgirls (with Fritz Umgelter and Jack Hill) | Tonight for Sure | Dementia 13 | You're a Big Boy Now | Finian's Rainbow | The Rain People
1970s	The Conversation | Apocalypse Now
1980s	One from the Heart | The Outsiders | Rumble Fish | The Cotton Club | Peggy Sue Got Married | Gardens of Stone | Tucker: The Man and His Dream | New York Stories (with Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese)
1990s	Bram Stoker's Dracula | Jack | The Rainmaker
2000s	Youth Without Youth
Productions	The Junky's Christmas (1993) | Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) | Don Juan DeMarco (1995) | Lanai-Loa (1998) | The Florentine (1999) | The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Preceded by: The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Palme d'Or 1979 tied with The Tin Drum

Succeeded by: All That Jazz tied with Kagemusha