He also shortened the movie on studio advice, since he had co-financed it with his own money and hoped that a shorter run-time would increase its commercial potential.
In , he admitted that he had cut away too much, and re-edited the film into a minute 'Redux' version by adding 49 minutes of new footage that he felt the world was now ready to see. But in , Coppola again re-evaluated the movie and decided to remove 21 minutes of footage from the Redux version. So the minute 'Final Cut', released in during the film's 40th anniversary, is shorter than the Redux version, but still substantially longer than the theatrical version.
The tape recording that Clean gets in the mail was recorded by Laurence Fishburne's own mother. Clint Eastwood turned down the role of Captain Willard because he felt the film was too dark.
John Milius explained how he had come up with the title "Apocalypse Now". Apparently, this was derived from a very popular tattoo among the hippie community of a peace sign that said "Nirvana Now".
Milius, by adding just a couple of extra lines, edited the peace symbol to make it look like a circle with a B52 bomber in the middle, and changed the slogan to "Apocalypse Now". You're going to be up there in a helicopter telling me what to do, and I'm gonna be down there in a swamp for five months. If Pacino had signed on it also may have felt like stunt casting: like a gimmicky Godfather reunion.
Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen had parts in the film that were cut. Estevez played a messenger boy, while Sheen was an extra.
George Lucas was originally set to direct the film from a screenplay by John Milius, of which Lucas had a hand in the early development of the script. Lucas' initial plan was to shoot the movie as a fake documentary on-location in South Vietnam while the war was still in progress. Francis Ford Coppola, who was to be the executive producer, tried to get the film made as part of a production deal with Warner Brothers.
The deal fell through, and Coppola went on to direct "The Godfather Lucas gave Coppola his blessing to direct the film. However, Coppola and Lucas's friendship was strained for a number of years due to Lucas unable to direct the film. Nick Nolte has said that he had never wanted a role more than that of Captain Willard, and was very disappointed when Francis Ford Coppola picked Harvey Keitel for the part.
When Keitel was fired, Nolte thought the role was his, but Martin Sheen eventually won the role. Sam Bottoms was on speed, LSD, and marijuana during the shooting of his scenes for the movie. Francis Ford Coppola wanted the film to be a special event by having it play in exactly one theater somewhere in Kansas in the geographical center of the country, built especially for the film, with a specially-made sound system, where the film would run continuously for ten years, and then hopefully anybody who wanted to show the film in their theaters would have to approach Coppola and exhibit it on his terms.
The five-and-a-half-hour early assembly cut of the movie was scored entirely using songs by The Doors before an actual score was created.
Francis Ford Coppola played the reporter on the camera crew that was yelling at Willard, "Don't look at the camera. Just keep moving", during the beginning of the "air cav" scene with Robert Duvall. The actors that were to play the camera crew didn't show up, so Coppola stood in as the reporter. The iconic opening scene of the palm trees burning under a storm of napalm involved the destruction of a real forest.
Around 1, gallons of gasoline were poured over the palm trees and then set alight. Tires were also burned to generate more smoke for the shot, while canisters were dropped onto the area to look like falling napalm. Acres of forest were destroyed in a matter of seconds. Since the movie was filmed in the Philippines, which was in the midst of their own war with rebels, environmental issues were not a big priority. Francis Ford Coppola later said, "They'd never let you in the U. According to screenwriter John Milius, he wrote the entire script of the movie listening only to music by Richard Wagner and The Doors.
To him, The Doors had always been "music of war. Morrison, an important Admiral of the United States Navy. The opening tracking shot of the film was originally a discarded trim from the footage of the village napalm attack. While going through the trims, Francis Ford Coppola accidentally stumbled on the trim and added it.
He later said that having that trim complemented well with the The Doors' "The End" and the accompanying montage. He claimed that it seemed so obvious to him that he almost did not write it, as he was certain it had to have been done in a film before. The letter Martin Sheen is reading in the deleted scene "Letter from Mrs. Kurtz" is actually a poem by Jim Morrison. The total length of film printed for the movie was approximately 1,, feet, about hours of footage.
Francis Ford Coppola, who considered offering the role of Willard to Al Pacino, said that Pacino would probably have played the role if they could have filmed the movie in his New York City apartment. Jack Nicholson also was offered the role, but turned it down. She was so popular with the troops that she was made an honorary G. I think they paid him by the pound. Harvey Keitel was initially cast as Willard. According to Coppola, one piece of film with him made it into the final cut; a shot from the distance of the river boat as it is moving through the water.
Orson Welles wanted his first feature film to be an adaptation of "Heart of Darkness". In , he presented RKO with his one hundred seventy-four page script for the film, but the studio turned it down, feeling it would be too expensive. They asked Welles for a more conventional script, so Welles gave them his script for Citizen Kane Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos agreed to let his Army supply the helicopters and pilots used in the film.
The Marcos government was also fighting rebels in the area where filming was taking place, and sometimes withdrew the helicopters and pilots when they were needed in battle, replacing them with pilots who were not familiar with the filming, which caused some problems.
Kurtz reads from the T. Eliot poem "The Hollow Men". Eliot was inspired to write this poem by "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. The first line of the poem reads, "Mistah Kurtz - he dead. Also, the photojournalist says, "This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this fuckin' shit we're in, man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, and with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Military sets for the movie were nearly destroyed by a hurricane during filming.
Instead of breaking them down and starting over, the partially-destroyed sets were used to create new scenes in the movie including the scene in "Redux" where the playmates are stranded at the deserted military base.
James Caan was Coppola's first choice to play Colonel Lucas. Caan, however, wanted too much money for what was considered a minor part in the movie, and Harrison Ford was eventually cast in the role. The famous line "terminate Steve McQueen was the first to turn down the role of Captain Willard. But after thinking about the fact the work would require several months of on-location shooting in the Philippine jungle, McQueen told Coppola he would rather play the Kilgore role instead, which would require much less location work, as long as he would still be paid his full salary.
Coppola, who was essentially self-financing the movie, simply could not afford it, and said no. According to Dennis Hopper, Marlon Brando yelled at him over a simple misunderstanding. He then decided to deliberately antagonize Brando whenever he could.
This resulted in Brando refusing to share the set with him, and the one scene they share together being shot on separate nights. So when Kurtz throws the book at Hopper's photojournalist character and calls him a "mutt", one can only assume that was Brando's genuine feelings about him.
In the DVD commentary, Francis Ford Coppola downplays his involvement in the controversial slaughter of the water buffalo, saying he "happened to film a ritual" being performed by Ifugao natives. However, in the article "Ifugao extras and the making of Apocalypse Now", cast and crew detail how Coppola staged the entire scene, directing the natives to chant and sing while they killed the animal which Coppola provided.
Afterwards, Coppola "went overboard and ordered a whole truckload" of animals which he gave to the Ifugao to slaughter on-camera.
However, only one water buffalo slaughter was used in the final cut. During some sequences, the sound of the helicopters was created on a synthesizer to blend in with the music. According to an interview given by Robert Duvall for National Public Radio's Fresh Air on July 22, , Colonel Kilgore's name was originally going to be Colonel Carnage, but they changed it to make their statement about him less obvious. The people on the riverboat were Vietnamese refugees who had come to the Philippines less than six weeks earlier.
Unknown to Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Sheen could not swim, and was always scared when in the boat for most of the film. He revealed this in a later conversation with Coppola. Francis Ford Coppola initially wanted to use "Universal Studios"-owned Sensurround system, but they would not let him do so. This forced Coppola to create his own version of the surround sound system. Hackworth's exploits in Vietnam.
Hackworth, born and raised in Southern California, commanded a helicopter Air Cavalry brigade, in which pilots actually wore Civil War campaign hats and flew in helicopters with crossed sabers painted on them.
Because the Cannes jury was unable to come to a unanimous vote, this film shared the Best Picture prize with "The Tin Drum The scene in the beginning, where Willard is moving around chaotically in his underwear and eventually punches the mirror, was filmed on Martin Sheen's thirty-sixth birthday. Although no date or year is given for when the film took place, a newspaper article being read by Chef reports the trial of Charles Manson.
This would date the action to November at the earliest since the article could've reached Chef and the crew after that date. According to the George Lucas biography "Skywalking", Lucas' decision to pull out of this movie destroyed his working relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, who felt betrayed, and ended their friendship, and the Colonel Lucas character was meant as a back-handed snub to his then ex-friend.
It would be several years before they would be on speaking terms again, and would not work together again until Captain EO In the Playboy Bunny show scene, several drums with the name "Dow Chemicals" are visible.
Dow is one of the companies that manufactured Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used throughout Southeast Asia to kill the jungle plant life that the United States government claimed was aiding the enemy in hiding from Army forces.
Although filming on-location in the Philippines lasted from March until May , Marlon Brando's presence on-set was only six weeks from September 2, until October 11, Burt Reynolds was offered the role of Willard. Marlon Brando virulently opposed this decision, and you can hear him on the DVD slamming Reynolds to director Coppola. Interestingly, the same thing happened between the three of them a few years earlier on The Godfather Coppola offered Reynolds the part of Michael Corleone, and Brando objected and threatened to quit.
Laurence Fishburne saved Emilio Estevez from dying in quicksand during some downtime, while this film was being made. One of the sequences cut from the original release version but added to the "Redux" version is a sequence featuring the soldiers making out with two Playboy Playmates.
Colleen Camp was the Playmate surrounded by birds. Camp said her character trained birds at Busch Gardens, she did this in real life. Camp, who had never been a Playmate although Coppola thought she had , had to be specially photographed topless to make the ersatz centerfold seen in the movie.
Emilio Estevez hung out on the set of the movie in the Phillipines with his father, Martin Sheen. It is Vietnam". The movie's line, "The horror When the photographer Dennis Hopper is babbling about the religious fervor of Kurtz, he babbles out portions of the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling. There are three different treatments of the opening and end credits.
In the 35mm version, the credits roll over surrealistic explosions and burning jungle. The 70mm version has none of this, no credits, nothing but a one-line copyright notice at the end.
Both versions are available on video. The 70mm version has been letterboxed. A third version has the credits rolling over a black background. Much of Scott Glenn's part ended up on the cutting room floor. He has more screentime in the workprint. The picture of Marlon Brando in military uniform in the dossier is from "Reflections in a Golden Eye ," for which Francis Ford Coppola had contributed to the screenplay. Kilgore says he's a "Goofy foot".
This means he surfs with his right foot forward whereas most people have their left foot forward. The character of Colonel Kurtz is inspired by the story of the traitor Lope de Aguirre, a sixteenth century Spanish soldier whose caravan trekked through the Amazon jungle in search of the lost city of El Dorado.
Randy Thom, one of the film's sound mixers, said that the sound mix took over nine months to complete. When Steve McQueen was being pursued for the role of Willard, the script was called "Apocalypse Three" as it featured three main characters, including a helicopter pilot.
Gene Hackman reportedly was considered for the role of the pilot, as it was Francis Ford Coppola's idea initially to cast the three roles with stars. John Milius originally wrote the script in , which was known then as "The Psychedelic Soldier". As Francis Ford Coppola described it, the original screenplay was a series of "comic book" scenes to point out the absurdity of the Vietnam War.
Over the course of several years of re-writes, the final script kept some of the absurd elements from Milius' original screenplay for the first half, with Joseph Conrad's novel, "Heart of Darkness" added to it for the second half of the movie. The following conversation took place and was recorded between Marlon Brando and Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocolypse Now; during the down time in between takes; as they were discussing various people in the industry:" Coppola: Burt Reynolds.
Brando: Don't say that name in front of me. The memorable medevac scene, where the soldiers meet a group of women, was filmed in the region. It was specifically filmed on a beach near Iba, the capital of the Zambales Province, but Typhoon Olga gave the crew some hard time. Forty to eighty percent of the sets were destroyed and needed to be recreated.
The Playboy Playmate set was pretty much wrecked and needed to be recreated. The Do Long Bridge scenes were also constructed from scratch in the same river, in the Laguna province of the Philippines. Additionally, scenes were also filmed in Metro Manila, the national capital region of the Philippines. The local Ifugaos were cast to play extras and disembodied heads, and the final cathartic ritual involving the water buffalo was an age-old Ifugao tradition that the director managed to capture on camera.
Some scenes were filmed on location in California. The director had to go back to California when the production got delayed, and he thought of filming a few sequences in the Napa Valley region of California.
During his interval in California, the director read a book on Genghis Khan and got a better grip of the character of Kurtz. Where Was Apocalypse Now Filmed? Charlie is the American soldiers' derogatory nickname for their enemy, the Viet Cong, and the surf-mad colonel is trying to persuade his troops to ride the waves, despite the bombs falling all around them.
Apocalypse Now, released in , depicts the madness and mayhem of conflict, and is widely regarded as one of the most powerful war films ever made. But it also has another legacy - something that the director, Francis Ford Coppola, could not possibly have intended. Apocalypse Now was not actually filmed in Vietnam, but in the little fishing town of Baler in the northern Philippines. As the cameras rolled, local Filipinos like Edwin Nomoro watched from the sidelines. Nomoro was 10 at the time, and he came down to the beach every day to see it transformed into a battle scene, complete with an entirely fake Vietnamese village and helicopters swooping overhead.
But what excited him most was the sight of the actors surfing - something he'd never seen before. At first, Nomoro and his friends found it difficult because there was no-one around to teach them. Only a surfer knows the feeling," he says, smiling. Once they got the hang of it, the boys started teaching others, and as word spread, tourists began coming to the little town to learn to ride the waves at Charlie's Point, as it became known.
Nomoro was able to turn his passion into a way of making a living, and more than 30 years on, he still earns money from the industry he helped to create. I also have some surfboards for hire," he says.
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