Apocalypse Now

My third film was “Apocalypse Now,” which was supposed to be the second film made by American Zoetrope after “THX 1138.” It was supposed to be directed by Irvin Kershner, who did “Empire Strikes Back,” but after Zoetrope went bankrupt, it got pushed all the way to the back of the list. Coppola decided to do it in ‘79, and as a war film and as a psychedelic film that’s a product of the Vietnam-era of the ‘70s, I don’t think that, shot-for-shot, there’s a better war film than “Apocalypse Now.” It should have won an Oscar; it didn’t. It has fantastic performances from Martin Sheen, and Robert Duvall, and of course Marlon Brando, among others, with a cameo by Harrison Ford and then a young Laurence Fishburne actually lied about his age in order to go to the Philippines to shoot. The Philippines were fighting a war while they were shooting, so the helicopters that you see in that movie are active Philippine Air Forces who weren’t killing rebels on the days where they were shooting.