It seems while the “Star Trek” Original Series Season One set may be the HD DVD of November, the most-anticipated DVD of November may actually be the 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.
Only recently it was announced by Paramount Home Entertainment that the documentary looking back at Francis Ford Coppola’s chaotic, catastrophe-plagued Vietnam production, Apocalypse Now would hit DVD on November 20th. I have never seen it, but have heard enough about it to know that it sounds like a must see documentary if there ever was one. The documentary footage was shot by Coppola’s wife Eleanor and pieced together by George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr.
The new DVD will contain a commentary by Francis and Eleanor Coppola as well as a couple of additional features, but after a recent post over on Hollywood-Elsewhere we get an actual response from Hickenlooper in response to the news, and he wasn’t even aware the disc was coming out, is upset he wasn’t asked to be involved and even says how he hopes there will one day be a Criterion edition.
Here is what he said in his post:
The promotion of this film was always frustrating to me, even back in ’91. Eleanor did very little to ever mention Fax or my name when she promoted the picture. When she went on the TV talk show circuit, understandably everyone wanted to talk to her, but she never once mentioned Fax or me. YES, of course, she narrates the film and she shot the raw footage in the Phillipines. But the fact that she narrates the story is only because of a huge fight I had with the producers and Showtime.
My father bought me Eleanor’s book “Notes” on my sixteenth birthday and I loved it. It’s how I fell in love with “Apocalypse Now.” When I was invited to write and direct “Hearts of Darkness,” Showtime’s plan was to make a one hour TV special called “Apocalypse Now Revisited.” My editors Michael Greer, Jay Miracle and I saw that the film had much larger potential. I saw it because of her diary and we all saw it because of these audio tapes my assistant editor Shana Hagan found in a box up at Francis’ vinyard.
Anyway, to make a long story short I had to fight and fight to get Steve Hewitt and George Zaloom and even Fax to some extent to allow Eleanor’s diary to be the narrative thru line. On top of that Fax and I clearly cut the picture together and made a story out of all this crazy footage that had lingered in storage for thirteen years before we got involved. Eleanor never had a clue what to do with it and to be fair to her she was wonderful in allowing us to tell the story as we saw fit. And to Francis’ credit he signed off on the picture. I was amazed that a man so powerful would have the courage to let us portray him without any interference whatsoever. It is a testament to the greatness of his character and spirit. And I say that sincerely.
What irks me is that when the film came out Eleanor became a bit of a credit hog. And now with the release of the DVD and not even being asked to do a commentary is kind of a slap in the face from my point of view. It also saddens me that I spent many hours of time and energy talking to the folks at Criterion who are dying to put it out. I even flew myself to Denver to have lunch with Francis to talk him into it. That was three years ago. He said he’d get back to me but I guess he’s been to busy. So here we are.
I found out about it last night and it’s coming out on Paramount DVD. I only hope that it has it’s 1.33 aspect ratio. A lot of theaters mistakenly projected it at 1.85 and cut off some of the titles and images. Maybe someday Criterion will be able to get it and I’ll be able to do the commentary and tell all these hilarious stories about my encounter with Denis Jacob who stole the negative when Francis was in post. About how the all the footage we were cutting was almost lost in the Universal backlot fire and that our editing trailers were only saved because the “Back to the Future” clocktower absorbed the flames as a kind of firewall. There’s also some funny stories about my meeting with Harvey Keitel and Sean Penn while they were working out and trying to convince Harvey to sign off on allowing us to use his likeness and to do an interview.
It was certainly a moment to remember. Harvey is the best.
Hickenlooper has a couple of other comments, to check those out head over here.
