Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American psychological epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford.
Coppola was drawn to Milius’s script, which he described as “a comedy and a terrifying psychological horror story,” and acquired the rights. In the spring of 1974, he discussed with friends and co-producers Fred Roos and Gray Frederickson the idea of producing the film. He asked Lucas, then Milius, to direct it, but both were involved with other projects. Coppola was determined to make the film and pressed ahead himself. He envisioned it as a definitive statement on the nature of modern war, the contrasts between good and evil, and the impact of American culture on the rest of the world. He said he wanted to take the audience “through an unprecedented experience of war and have them react as much as those who had gone through the war.”
In 1975, Coppola hoped for cooperation from the United States Army and scouted military locations in Georgia and Florida, but the Army was not interested. While promoting The Godfather Part II in Australia, Coppola and his producers scouted possible locations for Apocalypse Now in Cairns in northern Queensland, as it had jungle resembling Vietnam’s, and in Malaysia. He decided to make the film in the Philippines for its access to American military equipment and cheap labor. Roos, who also served as production coordinator, had already made two low-budget films there for Monte Hellman, and had friends and contacts there. Frederickson went to the Philippines and had dinner with President Ferdinand Marcos to formalize support for the production and to allow them to use some of the country’s military equipment. Coppola spent the last few months of 1975 revising Milius’s script and negotiating with United Artists to secure financing for the production. Milius claimed it would be the “most violent film ever made.” According to Frederickson, the budget was estimated between $12 and 14 million. Coppola’s American Zoetrope obtained $7.5 million from United Artists for domestic distribution rights and $8 million from international sales, on the assumption that the film would star Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen and Gene Hackman.
On March 1, 1976, Coppola and his family flew to Manila and rented a large house there for the planned four-month shoot. Sound and photographic equipment had been coming in from California since late 1975. John Ashley assisted with production in the Philippines. The film was due to be released on Coppola’s 38th birthday, April 7, 1977.
Shooting began on March 20, 1976. Within a few days, Coppola was unhappy with Harvey Keitel’s take on Willard, saying that the actor “found it difficult to play him as a passive onlooker.” With Brando not due to film until three months later, as he did not want to work while his children were on school vacation, Keitel left the project in April and quit the seven-year deal he had signed as well. Coppola returned to Los Angeles and replaced Keitel with Martin Sheen, who arrived in the Philippines on April 24. Only four days of reshoots were reportedly required after the change.
Typhoon Olga wrecked 40–80% of the sets at Iba and on May 26, 1976, production was closed down. Dean Tavoularis remembers that it “started raining harder and harder until finally it was literally white outside, and all the trees were bent at forty-five degrees.” Some of the crew were stranded in a hotel and the others were in small houses that were immobilized by the storm. The Playboy Playmate set was destroyed, ruining a month's scheduled shooting. Most of the cast and crew returned to the United States for six to eight weeks. Tavoularis and his team stayed on to scout new locations and rebuild the Playmate set in a different place. Also, the production had bodyguards watching constantly at night and one day the entire payroll was stolen. According to Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, the film was six weeks behind schedule and $2 million over budget; Coppola filed a $500,000 insurance claim for typhoon damage and took out a loan from United Artists on the condition that if the film did not generate theatrical rentals of over $40 million, he would be liable for the overruns. Despite the increasing costs, Coppola promised the University of the Philippines Film Center 1% of the profits, up to $1 million, for a film study trust fund.
Coppola flew back to the U.S. in June 1976. He read a book about Genghis Khan to get a better handle on the character of Kurtz. When filming commenced in July 1976, Marlon Brando arrived in Manila very overweight and began working with Coppola to rewrite the ending. The director downplayed Brando’s weight by dressing him in black, photographing only his face, and having another, taller actor double for him to portray him as an almost mythical character.
After Christmas 1976, Coppola viewed a rough assembly of the footage but still needed to improvise an ending. He returned to the Philippines in early 1977 and resumed filming.
On March 5 of that year, Sheen, then only 36, had a near-fatal heart attack and struggled for a quarter of a mile to reach help. By then the film was so over-budget, Sheen worried that funding would be halted if word about his condition reached investors, and he claimed that he had suffered heat stroke instead. Until he returned to the set on April 19, his brother Joe Estevez filled in for him, being shot from behind so close-ups of Sheen could be shot after he got better. Coppola later admitted that he could no longer tell which scenes were of Joe or Martin. A major sequence in a French plantation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars but was cut from the final film. Rumors began to circulate that Apocalypse Now had several endings, but Richard Beggs, who worked on the sound elements, said, “There were never five endings, but just the one, even if there were differently edited versions.” These rumors came from Coppola departing frequently from the original screenplay. Coppola admitted that he had no ending because Brando was too fat to play the scenes as written in the original script. With the help of Dennis Jakob, Coppola decided the ending could be “the classic myth of the murderer who gets up the river, kills the king, and then himself becomes the king—it’s the Fisher King, from The Golden Bough.” Principal photography ended on May 21, 1977, after 238 days.
The budget had doubled to over $25 million, and Coppola’s loan from United Artists to fund the overruns had been extended to over $10 million. UA took out a $15 million life insurance policy on Coppola. By June 1977, Coppola had offered his car, house, and The Godfather profits as security to finish the film. When Star Wars became a major hit, Coppola sent a telegram to Lucas asking for money. The release date was pushed back to spring 1978.
Apocalypse Now was honored with the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered unfinished. When it was finally released on August 15, 1979, by United Artists, it performed well at the box office, grossing over $80 million in the United States and Canada and over $100 million worldwide. Initial reviews were polarized; while Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography was widely acclaimed, several critics found Coppola’s handling of the story’s major themes anticlimactic and intellectually disappointing. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Supporting Actor (Duvall); it went on to win Best Cinematography and Best Sound.
Apocalypse Now is retrospectively considered one of the greatest films ever made; it has been assessed as Coppola’s magnum opus and appeared on various best-of films in 20th-century and of all time lists. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
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