Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

My film is not a movie.

My film is not about Vietnam.

It is Vietnam.

It's what it was really like. It was crazy.

(MAN CONTINUES TRANSLATING IN FRENCH)

And the way we made it was very much

like the way the Americans were in Vietnam.

We were in the jungle.

There were too many of us.

We had access to too much money,

too much equipment,

and little by little, we went insane.

This movie I'm making is not in the tradition

of the great Max Ophüls or David Lean even.

This movie was made in the tradition of Irwin Allen.

I made the most vulgar, entertaining,

exciting, action-full, sensoramic,

give-them-a-new-thrill- every-five-minutes,

have it everything, sex, violence, humor,

because I want people to come and see it.

But the questions that I kept facing or running into,

into the stupid script about four guys going up to kill a guy...

But that was the story.

But the questions that that story kept putting me, I couldn't answer.

Yet I knew that I had constructed the film in such a way

that to not answer would be to fail.

The film Francis is making is a metaphor for a journey into self.

He has made that journey and is still making it.

It's scary to watch someone you love go into the center of himself

and confront his fears,

fear of failure, fear of death, fear of going insane.

You have to fail a little, die a little, go insane a little,

to come out the other side.

The process is not over for Francis.

(ON TAPE) My greatest fear is to make a really shitty,

embarrassing, pompous film on an important subject,

and I am doing it.

I confront it. I acknowledge.

I will tell you right straight from the most sincere depths of my heart,

the film will not be good.

It's like going to school. You finish your term paper

and maybe you get a B instead of an A+ that you wanted,

so you got a B.

But I'm gonna get an F.

This film is a $20-million disaster. Why won't anyone believe me?

I am thinking of shooting myself!

Good evening. This is Orson Welles inviting you to listen now

to The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Imagine the feelings of a skipper of a fine frigate or a bark.

A civilized man at the very end of the world.

He'd land in a swamp, march through the woods,

and in some inland post feel the savagery,

the utter savagery that stirs in the forests and the jungles

in the hearts of wild men.

In 1939, Orson Welles planned to make Heart of Darkness

as his first motion picture.

Heart of Darkness is the story of a ship captain's journey

up the Congo River to find Mr. Kurtz, an ivory trader

stationed deep in the jungle.

A brilliant man of high ideals, Kurtz intends to enlighten the natives.

Instead, he succumbs to the primal temptations

of the jungle and goes insane.

Screen tests were done with Welles as Kurtz

and sets were designed,

but the studio backed away from the project,

fearing the elaborate production would go over budget.

Welles made Citizen Kane instead.

Heart of Darkness was abandoned in pre-production.

In 1969, Francis founded American Zoetrope,

a company dedicated to filmmaking outside of the Hollywood system.

One of their first projects was Apocalypse Now,

a Vietnam War story based loosely on Heart of Darkness.

Apocalypse Now concerns a Captain Willard on his mission

to assassinate a Green Beret colonel named Kurtz.

Kurtz has gone insane

and is conducting the war on his own terms deep in Cambodia.

George Lucas was to direct John Milius' screenplay.

Francis said that Heart of Darkness,

which was one of my favorite things I'd ever read,

he said it had been tried and no one could lick it.

He said that Orson Welles tried it and he couldn't lick it.

Richard Brooks, I think, or somebody else...

That's the best thing to tell a young writing student,

you know, say, "No one could possibly write this."

That was the first thing I tried.

The war was raging then,

and everybody was either getting set to go or to get out of it

or whatever they were going to do.

And we prepared a method of doing this whole thing in Vietnam.

We were going to do it in 16 millimeter in Vietnam.

That was John's idea. That was John's idea.

I was the one that was gonna have to go over and do it.

John is very good at being grand.

We would have been there right in time for Tet, probably and whatever.

And all these people that were in school with me

who'd done terrible things or were planning to go to Canada,

do something as drastic as getting married to avoid the war,

they were willing to go to Vietnam. They didn't care.

They wanted to carry lights and sound equipment over minefields.

And I think that Warner Brothers finally backed off on it

because they figured most of us would probably be killed

because we were so stupid.

We then tried to take Apocalypse around to all the other studios.

Nobody wanted to have anything to do with it and they just... "No way."

Why?

Because it was during the war and there was a lot of...

I don't know whether it was pressure or just fear or whatever,

but the studios would not finance a film about the Vietnam War.

People were so bitter about the war, you know,

that there were riots. Remember, we were living at a time

when there really were riots on the streets.

People were spitting on soldiers.

And studio executives, they're the last people

who are gonna get in the middle of that thing.

Studio executives are not noted for their social courage.

Without a studio, Apocalypse Now was shelved,

and Francis put his dreams for Zoetrope on hold.

He went on to direct The Godfather Parts I and II.

The films won eight Academy Awards and made Francis a multimillionaire.

In 1975, he revived his plans for Zoetrope

and chose Apocalypse Now as its first project.

I was in the position whereas I wanted to always write original work.

Original work really takes six, eight months minimum to do,

and here was the script of Apocalypse

that we could clean up and send out immediately.

So I basically said,

"Well, what if I just did Apocalypse Now?"

And in doing so,

we were able to make our company independent and further our goal.

But nothing really prepared me for the date I had

with trying to do a modern telling of Heart of Darkness

in a Vietnam setting.

Mike, would you read Kilgore?

Glenn, I'd like you to read... No. I'll wait for a minute.

I'd like Tommy, you read Willard.

Freddy's gonna read Chef.

And, Sam, you read Lance.

And, Albert, you read Chief, okay?

Let's just... What we'll do now, we'll just read it, just to read it,

to know what we're doing.

Apocalypse Now has been budgeted at $13 million.

In order to maintain creative control, Francis had to raise the money himself.

If the film goes over budget, Francis is responsible.

He has put up our personal assets as collateral.

A couple of million dollars of Francis' money was in it.

But that was Francis' style.

His philosophy was always, and remains to this date is,

"I'm gonna go and make the movie.

"And if everybody knows I'm going to make it,

"it will fall into place.

"And if I don't go forward as if I'm making it and start making it,

"nothing will happen."

My attitude towards money has always been, "I don't have very much of it,

"but if I use it in a very audacious way, it multiplies it."

If you have $1,000, but you're willing to use it, really not caring of risking,

you can make it feel like $10,000.

Marlon Brando has sent word that he will do the part of Kurtz.

Brando has agreed to three weeks of shooting at a million dollars a week.

Francis sent him a $1 million advance.

After auditioning dozens of actors,

Harvey Keitel has been cast as Captain Willard.

For the four-man boat crew who will take Willard upriver,

Sam Bottoms will play Lance.

Albert Hall, Chief.

Frederic Forrest, Chef,

and Larry Fishburne, age 14, will play Mr. Clean.

The whole thing's really fun. I mean, a war is fun. Shit.

You can do anything you want to.

That's why Vietnam must have been so much fun

for the guys that were out there.

I mean, like, I know this one dude who came back. Shit.

And he's nothing but a dope smoker, and all he does is smoke dope.

He said, "Vietnam was the best thing they could have done for my ass."

The Philippines has been chosen as the location

because of its similarity to the terrain in Vietnam.

Since the US Army has refused to cooperate

with a movie about the Vietnam War,

Francis has made a deal with Philippine President, Ferdinand Marcos.

The production will pay the military thousands of dollars per day

as well as overtime for the Philippine pilots.

In return, Francis can use Marcos' entire fleet of helicopters

as long as they're not needed to fight the communist insurgency in the south.

A band of rebels has been waging a fierce war

for control of the southern Philippine islands.

But the real phenomenon of being in that situation,

being in the middle of that jungle

and dealing with all the unfriendly elements that we were dealing with

was part of what the movie was about.

That was the first directorial decision that put us all in a circumstance

that reflected, you know, what the movie was about.

I gave him all the information that we had developed

on shooting in the Philippines.

I said, "Francis, it's one thing to go over there

"for three weeks with, like, five people

"and sort of scrounge a lot of footage using the Philippine army.

"But if you go over there as a big Hollywood production,

"they're gonna kill you, you know.

"The longer you stay, the more in danger you are

"of getting sucked into the swamp."

On March 1st, I came to the Philippines