TL;DR

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam-set epic Apocalypse Now was so chaotic it mirrored the madness of its setting: a year-long shoot instead of five months, budget blowouts, recast leads (Harvey Keitel out, Martin Sheen in), typhoons flattening sets, actors falling ill or partying hard, and an overweight Marlon Brando forcing a last-minute rewrite. Eleanor Coppola’s 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage—now restored in 4K for the re-released Hearts of Darkness—reveals the crew battling hookworms, Biblical rains and “homesickness” rivaling that of actual soldiers.

Documentarians Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper pieced together this “Idiodyssey,” complete with audio tapes of a beleaguered Coppola wrestling with the film’s ending. Despite real-life drama—editors on the run with stolen reels, endless reshoots and Coppola’s personal financial ruin—the project survived, became a cinematic milestone, and remains “something nobody will ever be able to do again,” as Bahr puts it.