French director Francois Truffaut once said, "I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between." Consequently, Francis Ford Coppola remarked on his film Apocalypse Now, "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam." .
The film's strength stems directly from Coppola's ability to effectively capture the essence of Vietnam by manipulating the surrounding circumstances, which in themselves, resembled the reality of the war. Coppola once remarked on the similarities between U.S. involvement in Vietnam and his own misadventures there: "We were in the jungle, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane." A planned six-week production schedule extended to sixteen merciless months in the jungle, where everything that could go wrong did.
As seen in the behind-the-scenes documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, made by Coppola's wife Eleanor, things could not have been more disastrous for the filmmaker. Filming the Phillipines, because it best resembled Vietnam, Coppola had to deal with the quick dismissal of original star Harvey Keitel; the on-set heart attack of his replacement, Martin Sheen; the torrential storms that ravaged his sets and halted production for months on end; a rebel uprising that required Ferdinand Marcos to reclaim the military choppers on loan to him; and finally, his own depression and suicide threats; as well as the late, drunken arrival of Marlon Brando.
While seemingly terrible, these aspects of the film are nonetheless the aspects that evoke the feelings of Vietnam. Coppola's strength derives from his focus on not only these elements but also to create his own that are as close to truth as one could come. In an effort to illustrate the exacting pains felt in Vietnam, Coppola wanted as little "movie-making magic" as possible.
