Francis Ford Coppola’s controversial buffalo scene in ‘Apocalypse Now’
Hollywood would have you think that every single one of their productions goes down with effortless ease, but this is far from the truth. Indeed, some of the greatest movies of all time were created in pretty gruelling working conditions, marred by technical faults and big egos, from Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws to Stanley Kubrick’s horror flick The Shining and Francis Ford Coppola’s fabulous war epic Apocalypse Now.
Coppola’s Vietnam War movie is well-known for its tumultuous production process, with the movie, which tells the story of a soldier tasked with hunting down and killing a Colonel who has gone mad with power, starring a number of huge Hollywood personalities. With the likes of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper and Martin Sheen, the cast often clashed with Coppola on set due to the demanding hours and extraordinary working environment.
Turning up late to set, refusing to enact the director’s vision and admitting that he only took the job for a paycheck, Brando may have been the most temperamental on set. “He was like an irresponsible kid,” Coppola said of the lead star who almost derailed the entire movie, before admitting that he was something of a genius, stating: “People say, ‘You got such a great performance out of the actor,’ but directors don’t do that. You’re just the coach”.
It’s no surprise that Brando felt that he could let loose, with Coppola allowing for experimentation on his wild production which went on for months and considerably blew its budget. Many of the cast and crew members got hooked on drugs and subsequently suffered mental breakdowns, all whilst Coppola somehow made the greatest Vietnam War movie of all time.
Still, there was one scene where Coppola indeed went too far, significantly riling up animal rights activists across the world. The moment comes at the end of the film, when Captain Willard (Sheen) brutally kills Colonel Kurtz (Brando) with a machete, as the director intercuts this moment with images of water buffalo being butchered.
The moment was supposed to relay the violence of Willard’s attack, with this certainly being achieved, however, the controversy came when people discovered that the water buffalo were killed in reality.
Having seen the buffalo killed for real by a Filipino tribe, Coppola was keen to add scenes of the butchering to his own film. Without the necessary animal protection laws, however, the director was free to allow the tribe to recreate the killing and for him to capture it on film.
It’s simply one of many bizarre stories that came off the set of Coppola’s 1979 classic, with Dennis Hopper receiving his paycheck in the form of cocaine. As documentarian, George Hickenlooper, who explored the making of the film, revealed: “Dennis recounted the story to me that Francis came to him and said, ‘What can I do to help you play this role?’ Dennis said, ‘About an ounce of cocaine.’ So he was being supplied by the film production drugs that he could use while he was shooting”.
Take a look at the scene in question from the classic movie below.
