Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now - and then

From The Times
September 13, 2008
Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now - and then
If Apocalypse Now looked hellish on screen, that was nothing compared to making it. Francis Ford Coppola tells our correspondent about his jungle odyssey

Thirty years ago, the 39-year-old film-maker Francis Ford Coppola was finalising the edit of a film about the Vietnam war.

Three years earlier, on the back of two Godfather films and the taut thriller The Conversation, he had been the toast of Hollywood. Now, he was in danger of becoming a laughing stock. Tales from the Apocalypse Now set – of drug-taking, shootings and even body-snatching – were doing the rounds.

Still, Coppola persevered in the editing suite. Until in 1979, having spent $30 million on a film budgeted at $12m, he emerged with a masterpiece that went on to take the Palme d’Or at Cannes and earn three Oscar nominations. As a new DVD set of the film is released, the director returns to his Apocalypse for The Knowledge.

Looking back, does it feel like Apocalypse Now was made by another person?

Recently, while I was working with [editor] Walter Murch, he said: “We’ve been doing this for 40 years.” I said, “Really? it seems like four.”

The thing with cinema is that you always feel as if you’re just beginning to understand it, and that makes each day very fresh and exciting. When I was younger, I decided I would make each film as an experiment, trying to do something that was appropriate to its theme, so Apocalypse Now was quite different from The Godfather or The Conversation. So I made it in a style I felt appropriate to the war itself: high amperage, big production, almost out of control. It wasn’t comfortable but I think it was right. So yes, each film is made by a different person, but always the same six-year-old who looked at life with wonder and love.

Given the chance, what would you do differently?

What is, is. There’s no way to tamper with the past. Perhaps I would have made the French plantation sequence without as much worry about cost; or I would have made the film with less anxiety.

Why did you replace Harvey Keitel with Martin Sheen, and how hard was it?

The hardest thing in movie-making is to replace an actor. I’ve done it only once or twice. Harvey is a wonderful actor, totally different in approach and style to Martin. But given what I felt the character had to convey, I was convinced that he was wrong for what I wanted to do. There’d be many roles perhaps in which I would replace Martin with Harvey, as they are both wonderful actors and good people. It was a judgment call. It was difficult, but I do not think I was wrong. Something I am very grateful for is that this difficult moment did not cost me Harvey’s friendship – which shows what a fine and generous person he is, as well as a dedicated actor.

What led you to use Wagner’s The Flight of the Valkyries with the helicopter attack scene?

John Milius, who wrote the original screenplay, created that idea – as with so many creative aspects of the story and script. I only did some rewriting.

Was it a challenge handling Marlon Brando?

I spent several days with Marlon discussing the themes of the film and the specifics of the role of Kurtz (whom Brando had asked to rename Leighly). Marlon repeatedly resisted the idea that we could do the sequence in a manner following Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which I was proposing. He said adapting the novella wouldn’t work and came up with all sorts of thoughts, some relevant, some not, about which way we should go.

So I just sat patiently, worried though I was, listening and discussing many things with him, recording them and studying them later. Finally, after more than a week of this (I only had three weeks of his time), he showed up and I was shocked: he had shaved his head, like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. I knew that meant he had come around to doing the role more like the novella, which he had always insisted wouldn’t work. I said: “But Marlon, you said it wouldn’t work to do it like Heart of Darkness – you said you had read it and thought it wouldn’t work.” And he said: “I lied.” He had only read it for the first time that night. From that moment, we went into high gear and did what we could.

How did you negotiate the problem of Brando’s size?

He admitted we had a problem in that this “Green Beret colonel” would not be as overweight as he was, which presented issues of what sort of costume should he wear, as there wouldn’t be uniforms in his size. He didn’t want to be depicted as a man who had let his appetites and passions go wild, which was the other solution. Marlon, like all fat people, was shy and embarrased by his weight, which of course I understood, having something of the same problem, as did Orson Welles. I decided to dress him in black and portray his fatness as great size, meaning that you usually see just his shoulders and arms. So his large scale could be interpreted as that of a giant man. I used a very tall, husky double for the scenes where you see all of him.

Why does his dialogue seem rambling, unrehearsed?

I took many discussions that I had recorded, and worked them up to a script. He recorded it and would listen through a small earphone to remember his lines. But they were all written. Plus, when he was rambling, that was usually in scenes where we weren’t intending to use the sound.

Legend has it that Dennis Hopper was high on drugs for much of the shoot...

God only knows what he was high on – but high or not, Dennis is one of the most knowledgeable, intelligent people I know.

The climactic animal sacrifice is similar to Eisenstein’s Strike. Were you aware of this?

No. My wife Eleanor had gone to shoot footage of the Ifagau people sacrificing a water buffalo. Our contract with them focused on the chickens they’d sacrifice daily, the pigs weekly, and, for the two big holidays, the two water buffalo. She came back with the heart that had been given by the chieftain to me, a token of honour. I was really desperately looking for a way to end the film, as the original script had an ending more appropriate for a war film in the style of A Bridge Too Far. So I decided, after much thought and conversation, to have Martin end by assassinating the great king (Kurtz), and utilise the fact that the Ifagao people were going to sacrifice their water buffalo on our last day of shooting. I refused to even consider killing anything ourselves for the purpose of making a film.

Why did the film become so all-consuming?

In those days we were ahead of the great electronic cinema revolution, and what you see was what you had to stage. It was a big movie with many difficult and dangerous big-scale sequences, not to mention the now-famous interruptions of typhoon, guerilla war and [Sheen’s] heart attack – all without the digital compositing. It took the time necessary to make it.

Which would you rather be remembered for: Apocalypse Now or The Godfather?

I’d actually like to be remembered for my present film Tetro, which is the most personal film I’ve made. It follows in the tradition I wanted to pursue, after The Rain People, The Conversation and The Godfather Part II. I don’t want to be remembered for a film, but for the fact that I loved so much and was enchanted by little children.

— The Apocalypse Now Steelbox Edition is out to buy on DVD