Greetings fellow cinephiles!
Today, we are dealing with a movie whose shooting
was a nightmare of legendary proportions :
Apocalypse Now, by Francis Ford Coppola, released in theater in 1979.
During the Vietnam War,
Captain Willard receives from the American secret services
the mission of finding and executing the Colonel Kurtz,
who took over the head of an indigenous tribe,
and is operating freely against the ennemy with uncontrolable savagery.
Aboard a patrol boat, Willard has to travel up-river
deep into the forest before killing the mad officer.
The project originally stemmed from Georges Lucas,
who had just directed THX-1138 and American Graffiti
John Milius, scenarist of Dirty Harry, among many others,
and who will  later on direct "Conan the Barbarian",
and finally, Francis Ford Coppola, freshly crowned by
by the succes of the Godfather I & II.
The idea of Georges Lucas and John Milius was to transpose
J. Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness" into the Vietnam War.
Initially meant to be directed by G.Lucas,
"Apocalypse Now" was assigned to F.F.Coppola,
who fully ignored how far into madness the shooting would lead him.
Against Gary Kurtz's opinion
-remember his name, because he is the man really behind
the timeless succes of Star Wars, not Lucas.
Where was I? Oh, right.
Against Kurtz's opinion, Coppola decided to shoot in the Philippines
where he started his movie without knowing how to end it.
Quickly, the shooting becomes a living hell,
due to disatrous weather, but mainly because
of a Francis F. Coppola completely paranoid,
trippin' balls on diverse kinds of drugs,
and having no idea on where he is going with the project.
Quite a bummer, but troubles are only starting.
Marlon Brando, casted as the Colonel Kurtz, arrives 4 months late on the set,
and a bit oversized.
He doesn't know his role, and hasn't read the Conrad's novel.
Martin Sheen, for his part, will soon be the victim of a heart attack while playing.
Meanwhile, Coppola, who has invested part of his fortune on the movie,
becomes more and more wacky,
and threatens several times to kill himself.
To top it off, this group of lunatics is completed by
Dennis Hopper, permanently under the influence of psychotropes,
who refuses to wash himself, in order to "fit into his character"
and who eventually ends up with all the crew mad at him.
During the final scene,
Martin Sheen realises that the dead bodies on the set are real
and where stocked in a cold room the whole time.
What a ride!
Firstly meant to last only 6 months,
the shooting took 16 months, and the montage 3 years.
But it all ended up in  a great cinematic delirium
of an outstanding plastic beauty,
no longer a movie about Vietnam,
but a trip to the edges of human madness,
and whose power of mythological evocation
earned it a place among the greatest masterpieces
The movie will win the "Palme d'Or",
and its succes abroad will compensate Coppola of his losses.
The shooting broke into legend,
and was the subject of the documentary "Heart of Darkness - A Filmmaker's Apocalypse"
by Fax Bahr and Georges Hickenlooper.
In  2001, Coppola re-released his movie
under the title of "Apocalypse Now Redux"
which includes 43 minutes of cut sequences.
That's all for now folks,
see you next time for new adventures!
