Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

9/5/2018

Francis Ford Coppola's film <i>Apocalypse Now</i> was one of the most infamously troubled productions in the history of Hollywood, so resonating in collective memory that it can still be parodied in new-millennium like <i>Tropic Thunder</i>. A typhoon struck the set in the Philippines, local officials were difficult to work with, Martin Sheen had a heart attack during filming, and Coppola was constantly troubled how to bring his script to a powerful ending. The 1991 documentary <i>Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse</i> chronicles these trials and tribulations through audio recordings that Coppola's wife Eleanor made for her filming diary, informal footage of life on the set and interviews with cast and crew. If all <i>Hearts of Darkness</i> did was rehash the same general triv

8/1/2019

***Outstanding documentary on the making of the hallowed "Apocalypse Now"*** Released in 1991, "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" chronicles the making of 1979's "Apocalypse Now," combining footage shot by Eleanor Coppola during the shooting of the film with more recent interviews with the cast & crew. Documentaries or commentaries on how a particular film was made don't interest me because I'm not a filmmaker and only care about the final product. As a writer and former musician I'm familiar with the creative process and understand how some ideas fail to deliver the goods and must be thrown out, etc. As an example, I heard some demos of a couple of my favorite songs and they were lousy compared to the final product and almost ruined my view of those songs. This explains