Francis Ford Coppola set out to make a movie about the chaos of the Vietnam War when the wound of the conflict was still fresh. He did not set out for a production that ended up being nearly as chaotic as the war itself. And yet, he persevered and wound up with yet another masterpiece to his name (arguably his last one as well). Many consider “Apocalypse Now” the best war movie ever made. The story of the film is arguably just as fascinating as the film itself, though, so here are a handful of facts about Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” adventure.
At its core, “Apocalypse Now” is about a man at the end of his rope heading up a river to try and find a military man who has purportedly gone insane and is living as some sort of demigod deep in the heart of seclusion. This is also the plot of Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness.” The novel is the inspiration for the film, which was written by Coppola and John Milius. However, they moved the setting from 19th-century Congo to Vietnam during the war.
