Francis Ford Coppola directed and produced the 1979 epic war film Apocalypse Now. Coppola co-wrote the screenplay with John Milius. The film is based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Apocalypse Now also draws from Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The movie is known for its troubled production; actor Marlon Brando showed up on the set overweight and Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack. Other actors in the film include, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Albert Hall, G. D. Spradlin, Jerry Ziesmer, Dennis Hopper,
Harrison Ford, and Scott Glenn.
Apocalpyse Now won the Cannes Palme d’Or. The movie was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama. The film is considered a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Apocalypse Now achieves greatness not by analyzing our experience in Vietnam, but by re-creating, in characters and images, something of that experience.”
