'Darkness' relives Coppola's pain

The 1991 documentary "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" recently received its long-delayed debut on DVD (Paramount, $25).

The film tells the story of director Francis Ford Coppola's nearly disastrous effort in the 1970s to make his epic Vietnam War film, "Apocalypse Now." Written and directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, the documentary relies heavily on footage taken by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, who was making a short behind-the-scenes film at the behest of United Artists, the film's distributor.

The film also includes interviews from the early '90s with many of the principals, including Francis and Eleanor Coppola and cast members Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper and Lawrence Fishburne, but not the camera-shy Marlon Brando.

Although "Apocalypse Now" eventually took in more than $150 million at the box office and received considerable critical acclaim, the filming of it was a logistical and financial nightmare.

With the U.S. government refusing to cooperate with a film it thought might be critical of U.S. policy in Vietnam, Francis Coppola -- who was largely financing the movie with his profits from the first two "Godfather" films -- decided to shoot the film in the Philippines. He made an agreement with Filipino ruler Ferdinand Marcos to hire the Filipino army and its helicopters for use in the film.

But everything that could go wrong on location did go wrong:

• The Filipino military took its helicopters away without notice whenever they were needed to fight Muslim rebels in the south.

• Lead actor Harvey Keitel was fired after two weeks of filming.

• His successor, Martin Sheen, suffered a heart attack during the production, causing it to shut down for nearly six weeks.

• Brando, hired for $3 million for three weeks of work, at first balked at coming later than he was originally contracted for to film his scenes, and then was ill-prepared and out of shape for his part.

Francis Coppola was unhappy with screenwriter John Milius' ending, but was having trouble coming up with a suitable one of his own. In the meantime, the American media were filled with stories about the film's problems. "Apocalypse Now" finally opened in August 1979.