“Months ago a man was ordered on a mission which was identical to yours. We have reason
to believe that he is now operating with Colonel Kurtz.”
The germ of Apocalypse Now may very well have started way back in 1962 when a seventeen-year-old
John Milius was first introduced to Joseph Conrad’s novella The Heart of Darkness by
his high school English teacher in Colorado (Cowie 1). About five years later at USC film
school, Milius would talk endlessly about how he wanted to make a movie about the Vietnam
War with fellow student George Lucas (Cowie 1). The young Milius, Lucas, and future Apocalypse
Now editor Walter Murch would drive to Burbank to hang out with Coppola (and others) at his
office on the Warner Brothers lot (Cowie 1). Coppola said, "We sat around ... talking
about our dreams. Obviously, many of them were trying to get their projects going. I
recall George [Lucas] and John [Milius] mentioning a lot of guys who were returning from Vietnam,
bringing word of the craziness of it, the drugs, the hallucination, the surfing .. . And
they were cooking up a script that John would write for George [to direct]" (Cowie 1).
Lucas said, "At the time, I was working on an idea to do a student film about a soldier
doing hand-to-hand combat with P51 Mustang. And it was out of those conversations that
we developed Apocalypse Now in terms of what it became" (Neon 113). I’m not sure how
you can do hand-to-hand combat with a plane, but okay.
Lucas had directed an incredibly well-made short film during his undergrad called Electronic
Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB. It won the top prize at a student film festival and Lucas was offered
a scholarship to go to Warner Brothers every day for six months
and watch them make a movie (Wiki).
Lucas: Now they have a work scholarship, where you get to work at major studio for six months,
you know, for a little bit of money. You go there every day and watch them make movies.
That’s how I met Francis, was on one of those scholarships.
The film he chose to observe being made was Francis Ford Coppola's Finnian's Rainbow.
Coppola: Well one day I was working on the show, and I kept seeing this skinny kid with
a beard, always looking. I went up to him and I said, you know, ’who’s that?’
Lucas: I would like to see the students be able to in the establishment, and hope that
someday they could work in the establishment and change the establishment, rather than
trying to branch off into something else.
Later, Lucas and Coppola, from their indie studio American Zoetrope, decided to expand
Electronic Labyrinth into a full-length feature— this was THX 1138
In 1970, at the official launch party for American Zoetrope, they talked about how how
Apocalypse Now would be Lucas’ second feature film after THX 1138 (Cowie 5). John Milius
and Walter Murch were there and the plan was that Milius would write it, Lucas would shoot
it, and Murch would do post-production— filming was going to begin in 1971 (Cowie 5).
The idea was to shoot Apocalypse Now like a documentary in black and white on 16mm [quote]
"in the rice fields between Stockton and Sacramento,” California (Cowie 5). A “friend and business
partner” named Gary Kurtz (no joke) took a trip to the Philippines to scout some locations
there, but Milius suggested (jokingly perhaps) to shoot it on location in Vietnam while the
war was still going (Cowie 5). Of course, it would also be near impossible to finance
a film meant to be shot in a war zone.
Milius: But we wanted to actually go to Vietnam.
Coppola: You did, not George.
Milius: But there were other people, part of our group, who would never. They would
sooner go to Canada than be in the Army, or they would sooner do something really rash
like get married or something. But they were perfectly willing to go make a movie in Vietnam.
In a separate interview, Milius said, "We were going to make Apocalypse Now for $1.5
million in Vietnam. We got all these connections; we got people who were generals in the Air
Force, and people who were going to help us get around. I remember all these guys around
Francis at the time who were hippies and extreme political radicals - they all wanted to go
make this movie. They wanted to go to Vietnam without any protection whatsoever and hop
around through the minefields. It came pretty close, but then the studio started saying,
"'Why are we sending these hippies over there? They're a bunch of nuts. Some of them will
be killed. There's a real war over there." So they stopped us. I mean, this was a time
when there were riots in the streets about the war, and a studio executive is the last
person who's going to want to get involved In the middle of that. Hollywood isn't exactly
known for its social courage (Neon 113).
Perhaps the main thing that got these UCLA and USC kids with "no military experience”
to agree to go into a war zone for the sake of art was a movie called Medium Cool (Travers 1).
Medium Cool was shot like a hybrid documentary and narrative where the director had the actors
go to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a [quote] “partial screenplay” (Travers 1).
Steven Travers writes, "The actors, playing journalists, moved around on camera
along the periphery of the worst riot in American history, mouthing scripted words mixed with
'reality TV' response to the violence about them" (Travers 1).
Lucas wanted the movie to be like Battle of Algiers with that hand-held Cinéma vérité style,
made using simple equipment capturing [quote/unquote] “realism” by avoiding artistic effects (Milius Interview).
Milius and Lucas were into the Cinéma vérité style at the time,
but Milius said that he realized that “it can only sustain for thirty minutes” (Milius Interview).
Lucas decided to make the movie after a small personal project called American Graffiti.
American Graffiti even had a character based on Milius named John Milner (Travers 5).
“You’ve got just two seconds to get your ass over in your corner.”
In spring 1974, Coppola met with co-producers Fred Roos and Gray Frederickson to talk about
going forward with Milius’ screenplay (Cowie 6).
However, Milius said that, once American Graffiti was a big hit and made Lucas rich— Lucas
didn’t really feel like going to the jungle to hang out with deadly insects anymore (Milius Interview).
Instead, he wanted to make an adaptation of Flash Gordon and, when he couldn’t get
the rights, decided to make his own space battle movie called Space Battles… wait…
no… Star Wars.
Lucas doesn’t agree with this saying, “I couldn’t get the same terms Francis had
gotten at Warners; it was much less. But he was determined to hang on to the same number
of points, his old number, so whatever Columbia took, I had to give up. My points were going
to shrink way down, and I wasn’t going to do the film for free. He had the right to
do it, it’s in his nature, but at the same time I was annoyed about it…. We couldn’t
get any cooperation from any of the studios or the military, but once I had American Graffiti
behind me I tried again and pretty much got a deal at Columbia. We scouted locations in
the Philippines and we were ready to go” (Travers 91). By the way, ‘points’ are
a percentage of the movie’s profit. However, Columbia wanted all the rights that Zoetrope
was going to get (Travers 91). Lucas goes on to say, “The deal collapsed… and when
that deal collapsed, I started working on Star Wars” (Travers 91).
Walter Much believes that Lucas made American Graffiti to prove to the studios that he could
make a commercially successful movie and have the leverage he needed to get Apocalypse Now
off the ground (Cowie 5). But once American Graffiti was successful, he was still having
trouble getting financing because of the subject matter (Cowie 5). Murch said, “[Lucas] asked
himself the question, 'What is it about Apocalypse that I am really interested in making?' It
was the story of how a small group of people, the Vietnamese, could possibly withstand the
entire might of the US ranged against them, and in the end come out victorious. What does
that say about the human spirit? And since it was not possible for him to make Apocalypse,
he transformed that story and set it in a galaxy long ago and far away. So Star Wars
is George's version of Apocalypse Now, rewritten in an other-worldly context. The rebels in
Star Wars are the Vietnamese, and the Empire is the United States” (Cowie 5).
So, Coppola asked Milius to direct Apocalypse Now, but he was busy working on
The Wind and the Lion (Milius Interview).
Coppola: I said I don’t know I’m in a real pickle here because what we really need,
is we need a movie that is a big hit so we can make a lot of money, so then we can make
all these little art films that we want to make.
Apparently, after reading the screenplay to Star Wars, Coppola gave Lucas an ultimatum
and Lucas chose Star Wars (Travers 93). Coppola was now in a bit of a predicament— Zoetrope
owned the script, so he decided that he would just make it himself. Coppola said, “I went
to George [Lucas], I told him we have to do Apocalypse Now, I said make it, and at that
point he was into Star Wars” (Travers 92). Lucas told Coppola, “If you want to go make
it, go make it” (Travers 92). Coppola’s said 'okay,' but his idea was
to go the opposite way of George Lucas’ hand-held 16mm black and white war movie and,
instead, make it a huge IMAX spectacle war epic— something like the Guns of Navarone—
and then make a ton of money and use that money to finance all these little art films
they wanted to make (Milius Interview). After all, he had only gotten the opportunity to
make The Conversation because of the success of The Godfather (Milius Interview).
“Don’t ask me about my business, Kay.”
Despite Coppola and Lucas’ conversation, Lucas was apparently disappointed that Coppola
did take the reins of the project. Lucas said, “All Francis did was take a project I was
working on, put it in a package deal, and suddenly he owned it” (Travers 93). Lucas
had tried very hard to get the project off the ground and as Steven Travers writes [quote],
"Coppola asked him to direct but he declined in favor of Star Wars, yet Lucas felt a certain
sense of entitlement, that his 'Vietnam movie' was still his regardless of the contractual
realities, and that it should still be there waiting for him to make it after he wrapped
Star Wars" (Travers 93).
Milius said, “I was always on Francis side… George had nothing whatsoever to do with it,
other than the fact that he was going to direct it. ‘Just go do your Vietnam thing, John.’
Francis gave George ample opportunity to make the movie. George never did. He was too good
for it. Francis has a lot of terrible qualities; he is a supreme egoist, and he will take everything
for himself. He is like what they said of Napoleon, he was great as a man can be without virtue.
But if Francis hadn’t done it, that movie never would have been made” (Travers 93).
Coppola: I was always hoping you know if I can make one big success, then I’d have
all this money, and then I’d just spend that money making films, like George always
tells me he’s going to do.
George Lucas is a very interesting experimental filmmaker
and he’s going to shock everybody because he’s got the dough, he’s just going to
go off and make a film some day…But he has a very exotic side of him, which I would love
to see, and he promises me he’s going to do it, and I believe him.
The interesting thing though is that these more recent small films of Coppola like Tetro
were actually financed by Coppola’s wine business instead of the money he made in the
film industry (DGA - Yellow King).
By the way, you can now purchase your very own bottle of Apocalypse Now wine. It says
that they [quote] “created a wine that is as bold and exciting as the film itself” (Coppola Wine).
In the summer of 1974, Coppola finally decide that he would make the film, but he did not
expect it to be so difficult. He had suggested that the film would be ready in time for America’s
bicentennial on July 4th 1976 (Travers 97). The movie would actually come out in 1979.
So, Coppola's idea was to make the film a big epic spectacle
in order to finance smaller films.
But, here’s where it gets even more interesting— Coppola wanted the production of Apocalypse Now to
be similar to how the Americans did the Vietnam war, so that the making of the film would
also be what the film is about (Commentary).
But what would be the cost of taking on such a project? Well, shortly after the film was finished,
Coppola reflected on his journey at the Cannes Film Festival in a press conference
he is now kind of embarrassed by:
Coppola: 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.
The full quote, which we never really see, continues with Coppola saying, “After a
while, I was a little frightened, because I was getting deeper in debt and no longer
recognized the kind of movie I was making. The film was making itself, or the jungle
was making it for me” (Phillips 156).
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