Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1993)

 

            This remarkable documentary on a remarkable film began with Francis Ford Coppola’s wife Eleanor filming behind the scenes at the fraught production of the classic.  Francis brought their three kids.  The documentary covers the epic problems like the storm that decimated the sets, the heart attack of the star, problems with an overweight superstar, etc.  It also chronicles the descent into darkness of her husband whose career was riding on producing his masterpiece.  Eleanor’s footage was turned over to George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr who converted it into the documentary.  They added interviews, but not with Marlon Brando because he insisted Coppola owed him $2 million.  The documentary debuted at the Cannes Film Festival.  That was a good choice because Cannes awarded the movie with the Palme D-Or even though Coppola just showed a rough cut.

            The following are some notes I made while watching the documentary.

1.  Coppola describes the filming as being like the war.  It took place in a jungle (in the Philippines).  Too much money and too much technology led to insanity.

2.  The movie took 16 months to reach theaters.  The shooting took 238 days.

3.  The documentary includes the destruction of the last set (Kurtz’ base).

4.  Coppola likens the film as an odyssey.  Willard is Odysseus.  Kurtz is the Cyclops.  The Playboy bunnies are the Sirens.

5.  Coppola took John Milius’ original script and tweaked it so it was closer to Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness.

6.  There was lots of drug use by the cast and crew.  Especially by Sam Bottoms (Lance).  I bet he excused it as method acting.

7.  Sheen shot the hotel room scene on his 36^th birthday.  He really was drunk.  When he hit the mirror, he cut his hand badly, but he insisted on continuing.

8.  Sheen was given last rites when he had his heart attack.

9.  Coppola had to overcome fear of failure, fear of death, and fear of insanity.

10.  At times during the production, Coppola insisted the movie was going to be a disaster.

11.  Brando was paid one million a week for three weeks.  He was given a one million dollar advance and he had to be talked into showing up instead of just pocketing the million.  When he showed up, he had not read “Heart of Darkness” and wanted to change the character drastically.

12.  Fishburne talks about Vietnam being “fun”.

13.  Fernando Marcos rented out his entire helicopter force, but he could pull them out if they were needed to fight rebels.  In the middle of shooting the village assault, some of the choppers were called away.

14.  600 people worked building Kurtz’s base.  They were paid a few dollars a day

15.  Replacing Keitel cost the production a few weeks.  He was replaced because he just wasn’t right for the part.

16.  Sheen felt old at age 36.  He was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.  His heart attack removed him from the production for 5 weeks.

17.  The encounter with the bunnies (which was cut) was filmed during the typhoon.

18.  It took two months to rebuild the sets.  The cast was sent home.