Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse Page #4

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do the ending.

I think I could make

the best film that way.

It seems like such a,

kind of, bright thing to do.

And I feel that the people back there

feel that postponement is like,

"The picture's in trouble or something. "

It's just that very intelligent,

major studios

used to do things like this all the time.

No, I know that.

And that's what sort of bugs me

is the ludicrousness of thinking

that I'm gonna go through

all that I'm doing,

after all I've been through in the past,

after all the pictures I've made

and after shooting 16 weeks,

that I'm not gonna finish a movie

in which I've invested

three years of my life just because...

I mean, it's stupid, man.

Yeah, but even if Brando drops dead,

I can still finish the movie.

I'll just get another actor.

If I can't get Redford,

I'll go back to Nicholson.

If I can't get Nicholson,

I'll go back to Pacino.

If I can't go to Pacino,

I'll go back to someone else.

I mean, sooner or later,

I can get someone for three weeks.

I mean, it's not in the cards

that we're not going to finish the movie.

This is the first day of heavy rain.

A typhoon is off the coast.

I've never seen it rain so hard.

Water has started coming

in the rooms downstairs,

and Sofia is splashing around in it.

Francis has decided to make pasta,

and he's turned on

La Boheme full volume.

I knew that if weather came,

that I was gonna try to incorporate it.

I didn't realize that

it was on such a big scale.

So I was only thinking

that I got to shoot tomorrow.

Even after that typhoon hit,

he began to film.

He said, "This has happened,

and monsoons hit Vietnam.

"There's a lot of mud,

a lot of rain around. Let's film."

Hey, don't leave without me.

We went to lba

to shoot the scene that got cut.

The set was, like, 80% demolished.

It was, like, mud up to the knees.

It was like pissing, man.

I mean, it was hitting you so hard,

it hurt.

It started out just as raining a lot,

and after a while, we realized

it was knocking out

centers of civilizations,

and rivers were overrunning,

and people couldn't get to the places...

They were all on the roofs

of hotels and stuff.

We had to stop for a while.

And I realized that certain sets

had been destroyed.

In order to rebuild the sets,

Francis has closed down

the production for two months.

The cast and crew

have been sent home.

It was an opportunity

for everyone, really,

to have a little relief from the situation,

because it became apparent

that it was gonna go on longer

than we realized in the beginning.

Last night, we slept outside on the lawn.

It was beautiful, so clear, with stars.

Francis tossed and turned,

having nightmares.

This morning he said he'd had a dream

about how to finish the script.

But now that he was awake,

it wasn't any good.

He said he couldn't go on

making the John Milius script

because it didn't really express

his ideas,

and he still doesn't know how to make

the film into his personal vision.

He's been struggling with this

for so long.

He knows the material

backwards and forwards.

He is practically chasing his tail.

First of all, I call this whole movie

the Idiodyssey.

- The Idiodyssey?

- This is the Idiodyssey.

None of my tools, none of my tricks,

none of my ways of doing things

works for this ending.

I have tried so many times

that I know I can't do it.

It might be a big victory

to know that I can't do it.

I can't write the ending to this movie.

I was on the spot.

I had gotten myself into something big.

Some people had come through,

a lot of people hadn't.

And it was my job

and also my financial burden

to pick up the pieces

and finish the movie.

I didn't quite understand

all the ramifications of the financing.

I felt that he'd do whatever he had to,

we'd borrow the money.

But I really support him as an artist,

and I feel like whatever

the artist needs to do

in order to get his artwork is okay.

And I always felt confident.

So what's the worst that can happen?

They take away your big house,

they take away your car, so what?

He was a very creative person

and could make another film

and could do another job

and earn his living and provide for us.

So I really wasn't frightened by it.

In fact, at that point in time,

we had escalated our lifestyle.

We had this big

22-room Victorian house,

you know, a staff and a screening room.

Life was kind of complicated for me.

And entertaining...

And I would have loved

to have had my lifestyle

reduced to some smaller scale.

So that part of me

was just fearless in that regard.

It really didn't matter if it all went

down the tubes in financing this project.

It was really okay.

A melodrama is currently

playing itself out in Hollywood

that for sheer emotionalism

rivals anything put on film.

The embattled figure in this drama

is director Francis Coppola,

who once again finds himself

waging a war

to keep his dream financially afloat.

Now, if you read newspapers at all

or listen to the radio, you know

that Mr. Coppola has been involved

in the production of this motion picture

for more years than

even he would care to count.

The press painted a portrait of me

as sort of a crazy person

and financially irresponsible,

which I don't particularly think

is really true.

No doubt that it was my money.

But the difference was that

Apocalypse Now was about Vietnam.

That was what made it sound

like such a crazy financial bet.

Did you ever consider quitting?

How am I going to quit from myself?

Am I going to say, "Francis, I quit"?

You know, I was financing the movie.

How could I quit?

July 25th, 1976.

We've returned to the Philippines

to resume production.

Francis hopes to finish shooting

in the early fall.

There is a kind of powerful exhilaration

in the face of losing everything,

like the excitement of war

when one kills

or takes the chance of being killed.

Francis has taken

the biggest risk of his life

in the way he's making this film.

This film is now $3 million over budget,

which the distributor, United Artists,

has agreed to put up.

But Francis has to pay it back if the film

doesn't make $40 million or more.

That just gets me all the more focused

on the present moment

and not allow myself to think

about the "what-ifs" of the future.

I know that every building that's built

runs into big production overages,

every bridge that's built.

Every NASA project,

any large project that involves

lots of people, conditions, weather,

of a construction nature,

goes over all the time.

And a movie is no exception.

It's true that

since it was my own money,

and once I felt that

I was going in a direction,

I wanted to continue

going in that direction.

Since it was my money,

I just did it, really.

There was a sequence in the film,

so-called the French plantation

sequence,

and it involved

the PBR coming ashore

to this rubber plantation still run

by these French-speaking people,

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