Has anyone else seen BOTH endings of APOCALYPSE NOW?

[FredCDobbs]

I've seen the black-screen ending on TV, and I saw this ending on the original 35 mm print I saw in a theater in 1979:

 

[BigFaceSmallRazor]

Fred, there was also a third ending that was only in the original theatrical release: After Martin Sheen gets back on the boat, you see a jungle being incinerated from bombs being dropped as credits roll. Coppola took the ending off because it implied that Sheen's character had had the island destroyed after he left, thus "exterminating" them (which was Brando's last directive). Coppola didn't want that implied, feeling that Sheen's character would not have done that.

[FredCDobbs]

Yes, that's what I saw in the theater, the napalm bombing of the village, and it seemed logical to me. I felt that Willard wanted to get rid of that whole crazy mess. I don't remember Kurtz saying anything about getting rid of it.

 

Anyway, that was a better ending, and it also matched the beginning of the film, and there was quite a strong implication by Coppola that Willard had gone a little crazy as a result of that and earlier assignments.

 

And in fact, there was even a Saturday Night Live skit about the making of the movie that said Coppola had gone a little crazy while making it, so his studio had to send a hit man over to the Phillipines to kill Coppola before he bankrupted the studio.

[sfpcc2]

I read somewhere that they shot an ending that mirrors the Book Heart Of Darkness. Willard returns home and meets with Kurtz's widow, (played by Michael Lerned.) I don't remember where I heard this though.

[BigFaceSmallRazor]

Fred, After Willard kills Kurtz, he goes & looks through Kurtz' notes & comes across something Kurtz wrote that says "exterminate them." It's taken directly from the book, btw.

 

And interesting your mentioning the SNL skit where somebody is sent over to the Phillipines to kill Coppola. A great documentary you should watch is called HEART OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER'S APOCALYPSE which is a doc Copolla's wife made about the making of Apocalypse Now. It's actually very surreal & strange how life imitated art & vice versa with the making of that movie. Copolla did in fact unwittingly become both Kurtz AND Willard. He was like Willard because, just like Willard didn't know what he was going to do when he actually confronted Kurtz, Coppola didn't know either. He didn't have an ending.

 

And speaking of the ending sfpcc2, it wouldn't surprise me if they did at some point shoot the ending from the book. As I said, Coppola struggled big time to come up with an ending. APOCALYPSE NOW was a movie that was created on a high wire. It was either going to be one of the biggest flops in movie history or a masterpiece. Fortunately for movie lovers, it was the latter.

[sfpcc2]

I think I read that in the book Final cut by Steven Bach. it was about the Heaven's Gate debacle.

[FredCDobbs]

Thanks for the information.

 

I lived in San Francisco from the late 60s til the late 70s, at a time when Coppola was based there.

 

Rumors were going around for a full 10 years about how he was going to make a movie about the Vietnam war, but nobody knew what kind of movie it would be.

 

Some rumors said it would have a lot of stuff about the Berkeley anti-war protests in it. I just happened to be shooting 35 mm color film of the Berkeley riots and demonstrations at that time, so I took a reel to a guy I knew who was working for Coppola at his Zoetrope office in San Francisco, to see if they would be interested in buying any of it. It was some of the best material ever photographed in 35 mm of the anti-war riots.

 

Anyway, my friend told Coppola about my footage, but I never received a call back. Then later I heard he was filming everything in the Philippines and the whole film would be about the war itself. Coppola is in the film. He is the guy with the beard with a film crew telling the soldiers to not look at the camera, just keep moving.

 

I always thought Coppola's idea for his film was brilliant, since it was more symbolic than realistic, symbolic about how America got gradually more and more involved in the war and how the war grew more and more crazy, as America "went up that river" during the duration of the war.

 

I loved his final film. The craziness of the project was just right to me. I liked the original ending the best, with the village napalmed. I didn't care much for the redux version with the extra stuff in it.

[BigFaceSmallRazor]

That's a great story, Fred, of someone with firsthand experience from those times. Thanks for sharing.

[twinkeee]

< ...my friend told Coppola about my footage...>

 

Since it was the best material ever photographed, it was obviously Coppola's loss.

 

Nevertheless, you must have been very proud of yourself for accomplishing such a great job !

 

Twink

[FredCDobbs]

I took my best reel to several places, including MGM, some time in the early 70s. They had screening rooms in the main building, the one with the columns on the left as you approached the main entrance gate.

 

I don't know who the guys were who saw my film. They agreed it was great footage, but they told me that they would have trouble using it in any kind of feature because it was sharp enough so that individual faces could be recognized, and a big studio could not show real people's faces without a signed model release. I told them I couldn't get model releases during riots.

 

Oh, well.

[twinkeee]

To have been complimented by MGM that it was "Great Footage", must have been an Awesome feeling !

 

Filming riots, could Not have been easy at all .

[lzcutter]

FredC,

 

I saw *Apocalypse Now* on opening day at the Cinerama Dome with the ending you remember.

 

I know that about twenty years ago Francis Ford Coppola released a director's cut of the film that included footage at a French plantation in Vietnam. I can't remember if the ending was different because I didn't care for the extra footage that FFC had included in the director's cut. I thought it took away from the story he was originally trying to tell.

[FlyBackTransformer]

Not enough of Brando's Kurtz just Sheen's useless musings. Lets see a remake with Iraq the new setting . How come Hollywood stopped making war movies anyway?

[Dargo2]

>Lets see a remake with Iraq the new setting.

 

I thought 1999's "Three Kings" was a very well done film which spotlighted the "absurdist" viewpoint of that war and in a similar manner to how Coppola presented his view of the Vietnam War.

 

>How come Hollywood stopped making war movies anyway?

 

What about "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty" ? They're both fairly recent films...and GOOD ones, I might add.

[FredCDobbs]

I think every version of Apocalypse Now that I've seen on TCM have NOT had the explosion scenes at the end.

 

I don't care for the redux version. I prefer the original version with the explosions at the end.

 

And it's a funny thing.... I usually don't like cursing in films, but I must have watched this film at least four times before I noticed that there was cursing in it. But I felt it was completely appropriate. If I had been over there, in that war, I would have been cursing too.

[FredCDobbs]

I think Coppola was a modern genius, both directing and writing. I loved his Patton, and the first two Godfather films. The Godfather films were brilliant and they were the first to show how the "mafia" worked and how it was based on "family relationships". It was the family business.

[rewrite]

Thanks, Dargo. Those were the three examples that came to my mind, too.