How ‘Apocalypse Now’ became a behind-the-scenes warzone
It isn’t quite a case of art directly imitating life, but it was nonetheless fitting that Apocalypse Now – one of the greatest war epics in cinematic history – endured a nightmarish production that left its cast and crew feeling as if they’d been in the trenches and on the frontlines themselves.
Adapting the plot of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and transplanting the action to the Vietnam War sounds deceptively simple in theory, but in execution, it ended up creating a mythology that was every bit as iconic and harrowing as the movie. Director Francis Ford Coppola faced adversity and obstacles every single step of the way but somehow still managed to emerge on the other side with yet another stone-cold classic under his belt.
Shooting was only supposed to last for four months when Coppola first called action in early 1976, but the last day of filming occurred in May of 1977 after a mammoth 236-day schedule that was forced to contend with near-death experiences, uncooperative stars, natural disasters, extensive reshoots, and plenty more besides.
Original star Harvey Keitel was the first high-profile casualty, with the actor’s reluctance to wait around for Marlon Brando to arrive on set at the expense of being out of the country while his children were at school playing into Coppola’s overall dissatisfaction with the way he was inhabiting Benjamin Willard, with a parting of the ways being in the best interest of both parties.
Replacement Martin Sheen gave a remarkable performance and proved the perfect choice in the end, but he too was stricken by his own misfortune after suffering a massive heart attack at the age of only 36. Concerned that the already over-budget production would be halted if word got back to the people footing the bill, the actor lied about his condition and claimed it was all down to heat stroke.
For stand-in shots where Sheen wasn’t required to be facing the camera, his brother Joe Estevez was drafted in and even helped in the recording booth by providing some of Willard’s voiceover, to the extent Coppola retrospectively admitted he couldn’t even remember which sibling was which when rewatching Apocalypse Now in its final form.
The budgetary overruns weren’t helped by an entire scene set in and around a plantation being axed in the editing suite despite costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to stage and execute, although Typhoon Olga destroying a huge percentage of the sets in the Philippines didn’t exactly help matters. The entire Playboy Playmate set was annihilated, delaying an entire month of scheduled filming on location, which caused countless members of the cast and crew to return home until they were needed.
In addition, the entire payroll was stolen at one point, with Apocalypse Now running six weeks behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget before it was midway through, forcing Coppola to file a $500,000 insurance claim for storm damage and guarantee a loan from studio United Artists that would see him pay for the excess costs out of his own pocket if the film couldn’t bring in over $40million at the box office from distributor rentals.
That’s without even mentioning Brando infamously showing up vastly overweight and with a staunch refusal to learn his lines, necessitating the actor’s Kurtz to be dressed entirely in black with only his face in the frame, all while he worked with Coppola to reconfigure the entire ending and his involvement in it.
Then there was the controversies over the killing of a live animal, Sheen getting insanely drunk to get into character before shooting his first scene and cutting his hand wide open after punching a mirror, Laurence Fishburne lying his way into being cast as a soldier at the age of 14, the authorities seizing passports following graverobbing allegations, or Coppola cobbling together multiple conclusions at various points in the process after failing to settle on a third act climax that he was satisfied with.
War truly is hell, but for anyone involved in the production, so was the making of Apocalypse Now.
