Milius: The True Mind Behind APOCALYPSE NOW? (Behind the Scenes Documentary)

Apocalypse Forever

Cinema Labyrinthine
4.12K subscribers5,707 views Apr 10, 2022
In this rare one on one, legendary writer/director Francis Ford Coppola interviews John Milius, the virtuosic screenwriter of Apocalypse Now. Milius discusses his insular process of adapting Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness: Drawing on both personal and historic experiences of the Vietnam War and the hippie movement. Many other great writers, including

Orson Wells have tried adapting Conrad's novella, but had hit dead ends. Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic psychological[6] war film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, and Dennis Hopper. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola

and John Milius with narration written by Michael Herr, is loosely based on the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Sheen), who is on a secret mission to assassinate

Colonel Kurtz (Brando), a renegade Army Special Forces officer accused of murder and who is presumed insane. Apocalypse Now was honored with the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered unfinished before it was finally released on August 15, 1979, by United Artists. It performed well at the box office, grossing $40 million domestically and going on to

gross over $100 million worldwide. Initial reviews were mixed; while Vittorio Storaro's cinematography was widely acclaimed, several critics found Coppola's handling of the story's major themes anticlimactic and intellectually disappointing. Apocalypse Now is today widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards at the 52nd

Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Supporting Actor for Duvall, and went on to win for Best Cinematography and Best Sound. It ranked No. 14 in Sight & Sound's greatest films poll in 2012, and No. 6 in the Director's Poll of greatest films of all time. Roger Ebert also included it in his top 10 list of greatest films ever in 2012.

In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".