A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Apocalypse Now (1979) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola Written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola Narration written by Michael Herr Based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness Starring: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, G.D. Spradlin Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Apocalypse Now, director Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic, is one of the greatest films ever made. Winner of the 1979 Palme d’ Or award at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for Best Picture at the 1979 Academy Awards, Apocalypse Now was also a com

(C) 2010 Paramount Pictures Apocalypse Now: Full Disclosure Box Set (2010) Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Many film critics and movie lovers consider director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now to be one of the best war movies ever made. The late Roger Ebert hailed Coppola’s original version as “one of the key films of the century,” while Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers calls the longer 2001 Apocalypse Now Redux “one for the ages when it comes to the moral battles of war.” In Apocalypse Now, Coppola and screenwriter John Milius ( Red Dawn ) take Joseph Conrad’s 1902 Africa-set novella Heart of Darkness and carried it forward in time to the hellish jungles of Southeast Asia.  The filmmakers depict 1960s era helicopter gunships flying into battle accompanied by Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and change the narrator’s name from Marlow to Capt. Willard.  However, they keep Conrad’s haunting vision of a nightmarish

Michael: My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Kay Adams: What was that? Michael: Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract. When I was nine years old, my mom, older sister, and I saw Francis Ford Coppola's  The Godfather  at the now-gone Tropicaire Drive-In in Miami. The now-classic adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel about an aging  New York Mafia don's efforts to hand over his empire of crime to his favored son was a top draw, and Mom and Vicky were  curious about it. I don't know why they took me; I'm assuming that they couldn't find a babysitter, or perhaps they didn't think that it had any objectionable content. Because we had recently moved back to the States after living abroad for six years, I was still learning English, so I didn't understand any of the movie's plot, nuances, or the dialogue. I  was , however, freaked out by the two sce

Francis Ford Coppola’s original 1979 version of Apocalypse Now is a dark, sardonic, surrealistic yet mesmerizing reworking of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Fredric Forrest, Larry Fishbourne, and Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now trades Conrad’s African setting for the then-still largely unexplored (by Hollywood, anyway) jungles of Vietnam. The film’s premise is deceptively simple. A hard-bitten, combat-weary Capt. Benjamin Willard (Sheen) is given a difficult (and highly classified) assignment: he is to travel up a long Vietnamese river on a Navy PBR (river patrol boat) to find the jungle outpost of Col. Walter Kurtz (Brando), a highly decorated and intelligent Special Forces officer who has gone "rogue" and utilizing what one senior officer describes as "unsound methods" to fight the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Willard is to locate Kurtz and "terminate (him) with extreme prejudice.&quo