Apocalypse Now
This is the end...
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Production
Budget
$31 500 000
Revenue
$150 000 000
Director
Scenario
Joseph Conrad
Author
Composer
Producer
Actors
Martin Sheen
Captain Benjamin Willard
Marlon Brando
Colonel Walter Kurtz
Frederic Forrest
Jay 'Chef' Hicks
Albert Hall
Chief Phillips
Laurence Fishburne
Tyrone 'Clean' Miller
Sam Bottoms
Lance B. Johnson
Robert Duvall
Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore
G. D. Spradlin
General Corman
Short description
Set during the Vietnam War, the film follows Captain Benjamin Willard, an intelligence officer who is pulled from a hotel room in Saigon and given an assignment that is not officially acknowledged. He is to travel upriver into Cambodia to find Colonel Walter Kurtz, a Green Beret who has broken from the American military and established his own authority over a remote jungle region. Willard makes the journey by patrol boat with a small crew, and the further they travel from familiar ground, the more the war around them seems to lose its logic.
Francis Ford Coppola directed and produced the film and wrote the screenplay with John Milius and Michael Herr. It is the sixth of the twenty-six films he has directed in chronological order, arriving between The Conversation and One from the Heart. Martin Sheen plays Willard, with Marlon Brando as Kurtz and supporting turns from Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Laurence Fishburne and Sam Bottoms. The production was large, with fifty credited cast members and 183 credited crew. Made for about 32 million dollars, it returned roughly 84 million worldwide.
Audiences hold it in high regard: on IMDb it scores 8.4 from around 767,000 votes, and on TMDB 8.3 from more than 9,000. A critics' rating of 9.3 from 149 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- In scenes with Dennis Hopper, the inscription Apocalypse Now can be seen on stone structures.
- According to British channel Film4, the film ranked 1st on the list of "50 Films to See Before You Die."
- Initially, George Lucas was supposed to direct the film, as he was Coppola's protégé at the time at American Zoetrope studio. Coppola founded this studio as an alternative to the major Hollywood studios and planned to use it to support young directors who had just finished film school and courses. The Vietnam War was still raging at the time, and the original plan was to shoot the film directly in Vietnam, in a guerrilla style. However, Warner Bros., which had a contract with Zoetrope, refused to finance such a project, citing both doubts about the film's commercial success and safety concerns – the risk that the filmmakers would be harmed while filming in a combat zone was significant. Lucas later claimed that Zoetrope itself viewed the project as "crazy," and he and his colleagues on the project were treated similarly.
- Steve McQueen was invited for the role of Captain Willard.
- Harvey Keitel had already begun playing the role of Willard, but Coppola replaced him with Martin Sheen after two weeks.
- Sheen's character's full name is Benjamin Willard. Harrison Ford's older sons are named Benjamin and Willard.
- Coppola lost 100 pounds during filming.
- Marlon Brando behaved the worst on set. He had been paid a million dollars in advance, but he threatened to leave the film every time. Coppola then told his agent that he didn't care, and that in exchange for Brando, he wanted Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, or Al Pacino. In the end, Brando stayed, gained 40 kilograms during filming, refused to read the original script and even Conrad's novel, rejected Coppola's directorial script, agreed only to improvise his role, and forbade being filmed in the light – only in the dark.
- Originally, Kurtz was supposed to be named Colonel Levi in the script.
- Coppola joked that if Al Pacino had agreed to the role of Kurtz, he would have had to film his movie in Pacino's New York apartment.
- In some scenes, the sound of helicopters taking off was reproduced on a synthesizer in order to better synchronize it with the music.
- Filming took place in the Philippines, and by contract, President Ferdinand Marcos was supposed to provide the film crew with helicopters and pilots. However, from time to time Marcos would take the aircraft to fight local rebels.
- According to the shooting schedule, the film was supposed to take just over six weeks to film, but it stretched to 16 months.
- The shooting was interrupted for several months by a typhoon.
- Rumor has it that Coppola and many others from the film crew were under the influence of marijuana and LSD during filming. At the very least, actor Sam Bottoms was caught doing so.
- The film has no opening credits. Its title only appears at the very end.
- One of the sound engineers, Randy Thom, said it took nine months to mix the sound the way Coppola wanted it.
- Many of the film's dialogues were recorded during post-production, as previously recorded noises (such as the sound of helicopters) ruined most of the scenes with dialogue.
- The character of G.D. Spradlin is named General Corman. This is a nod to the legendary producer Roger Corman, with whom Francis Ford Coppola began his career.
- To get into the film, Laurence Fishburne lied about his age (filming began in '76, at which point he was 14 years old).
- The American government and military command, seeing that Coppola was planning to make a film that would not align with the official view of the Vietnam War, refused to provide any assistance with the film's production. Coppola found support from the Philippine government, which was then in strained relations with the United States.
- During the filming of Captain Willard's suffering in the Saigon hotel, Coppola strived for maximum realism, and Sheen supported him in this, plunging himself into depression and deliberately abusing alcohol. It took him a long time to recover and return to work, and Coppola even considered shutting down the film's production. When filming resumed, Sheen was shielded from excessive workload, and in some scenes that needed to be reshot, he was replaced by his brother, Joe Estevez, who resembled Sheen in appearance and voice. He later also dubbed some of the film's dialogue.
- It took about 15 hours to view all the filmed material. Because of this, the film's editing, which at the time took about six months, stretched to almost two years. When the first cut of the film was ready, it turned out to be over five hours long, and it needed to be significantly shortened for release. Coppola recalled that this was a very difficult process for him, requiring him to discard entire plotlines that had taken a lot of time, effort, and money to film. Eventually, Coppola edited a three-hour version of the film, which was shown at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival as a "work in progress." The film was a stunning success and won the festival's top prize – the "Palme d'Or." At the press conference in Cannes, Coppola uttered the now-famous words: "My film is not about Vietnam; it *is* Vietnam."
- Coppola explained why the film has no titles, and shouldn't: each viewer attending a screening anywhere on the planet should receive a special booklet with their ticket containing a detailed account of the film's production and detailed information about its creators, including a list of all crew members.
- Roger Ebert declared 'Apocalypse Now' the best film of 1979 and later added it to his list of great films on the grounds that 'it goes further than any other into the dark corners of the human soul.' According to Ebert, it is 'less a film about war than about how war brings to the surface a truth about people that they would prefer never to know.'
- Some Vietnam War veterans consider 'Apocalypse Now' the most realistic film about that war.
- According to Philippine law, all the sets had to be destroyed after filming was completed. Coppola decided to demolish the sets using a series of explosions and film it, hoping to use the footage somehow later. Coppola and his team set up several cameras with different lenses and filters, and filmed the explosions from different angles and at different speeds. In the original 35mm version of the film, titles ran over these shots at the end, and many interpreted this as an indication that Willard had, after all, called in the airstrike. Upon learning of this reaction, Coppola cut these shots from the ending and left only the titles. He denied that the bombing of Kurtz's settlement was considered as one of the alternative endings.
- A cow is genuinely killed in the film.
- Coppola desperately searched for a final scene that satisfied him until his wife, Eleanor, told him she had witnessed an animal sacrifice in a local Ifugao tribe.
- In a private conversation during a visit to Moscow in 1979, Coppola recounted that in a previous version of the finale, the final shot of the film was to be a camera move (from a wide shot to a close-up) on Willard’s face as he emerged to the natives after killing Colonel Kurtz. Originally, the director intended this final shot to echo the first (which was never filmed), which the film was supposed to open with: the director’s screenplay preserves a mention of a rapid camera movement from outer space to Earth, to Southeast Asia, to Vietnam, to Saigon, to the hotel where Willard lies in bed, and the camera was to stop on Willard’s face (where the film now begins).
- There are several different versions of the end credits. The 70mm film release does not contain end credits (except for the Copyright 1979 Omni Zoetrope inscription), and in the final frames of the film, Willard sails past a statue of a stone idol that gradually dissolves into darkness. In the 35mm film version, the credits are shown against a backdrop of explosions. In the 1979 version, the most common one, the credits run on a black background. In the Redux version, the credits are also shown on a black background, but music plays and the sounds of the jungle can be heard.
- Among the scenes not included in the film, on the Blu-ray edition the last is a scene titled 'Special forces knife.' In this scene, Captain Willard witnesses the murder of a photojournalist on Kurtz’s orders, because he took a picture of him. The photojournalist is killed by Colby (a soldier who sided with Kurtz), after which Willard throws a knife at Colby and kills him.
- The film is based on Joseph Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness” (1902).
- Francis Ford Coppola played a small role as a journalist reporting during the battle. His words were: “Don’t look at the camera, pretend you’re fighting!”
- When Francis Ford Coppola offered Al Pacino the role of Willard, he refused, saying: “I know what this is going to be like. You’re going to sit there in the helicopter and tell me what to do, and I’m going to be stuck in this swamp for five months.” In reality, filming lasted 1 year and 4 months.
- John Milius wrote his screenplay in 1969. It was called "Psychedelic Soldier." According to him, the rebellious colonel not only proclaimed himself a god but also entered into direct conflict with the American army.
- By the time McQueen was considered for the lead role, the screenplay was titled "Apocalypse Three," featuring three main characters, all of whom, according to Coppola's vision, were to be played by major stars, including Gene Hackman.
- Several photographs of Colonel Kurtz from his file were stills from John Huston's 1967 film "Reflections in a Golden Eye," in which Brando played a military officer.
- "I am convinced that I created a work of art, and I could not have done it better," Francis Ford Coppola said about "Apocalypse Now."
- John Milius recounted that he was inspired to write the screenplay by the words of a professor he studied with: the professor argued that no one had yet managed to make a good film based on "Heart of Darkness," despite attempts by such legends as Orson Welles and Richard Brooks. Milius's screenplay did not initially envision the film as anti-war, as it later became. Milius held politically right-wing views, and the screenplay included several monologues in which Colonel Kurtz praised the virtues of war and the warrior lifestyle. Milius himself refused to direct the film, believing that George Lucas was a much better fit for the role.
- Coppola's statement about the filming is well-known: "We made this film much like the Americans waged war – there were too many of us, we spent too much money, and we gradually went insane." Since Coppola invested his own funds in the film's production, he experienced unprecedented pressure – if the film was not completed within a reasonable timeframe or proved commercially unsuccessful, the director faced the risk of bankruptcy.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
